Heo Chaejeong, Yoo Jeongwan, Lee Si Young, Lee Sohee, Joo Eun Yeon, Hong Seung Bong, Lee Young Hee, Suh Minah
Department of Energy Science, Department of Physics, Nano Medical Laboratory, Suwon, Kyunggi-Do, 440-746, South Korea.
J Nanosci Nanotechnol. 2012 Jul;12(7):5222-7. doi: 10.1166/jnn.2012.6373.
Mobility is one of the important characteristics of living cells. It also plays a significant role in therapeutic cell transplantation with target location specificity. To enhance cell mobility, a neural cell stimulator was assembled with graphenes, which are two-dimensional nanocarbon materials that form a transparent electrode over the cover glass in a cell culture dish. This transparent stimulator applies electrical field stimulation to the neural cells. The advantages of this new transparent electrical field stimulator (TEFS) with a graphene electrode include transparency, because few layered graphenes are optically transparent, and biocompatibility, because the cover glass is coated with laminin. In this paper, it is reported that constant electric field stimulation, which is at a specific strength, facilitates the mobility of a neural cell and makes the visibility of cellular behavior on the electrode much better than that of any other existing cell stimulator that has metal electrodes. The strength of the electrical field for stimulating cells varies from 4.5 mV/mm to 450 mV/mm. When continuous electric field stimulation was applied for 4 hours at the electric field strength of 45 mV/mm, the mobility of the neural cells was significantly enhanced compared to the control conditions, wherein there was no electric field stimulation. Thus, the feasibility of the TEFS with the nanothickness of graphene was tested to modulate the mobility of neural cells in vitro. The result suggests that electrical field stimulation could enhance neural cell alignment, cell-to-cell coupling, and networks, and may be applied to cell transplantation to boost therapeutic effectiveness.
细胞迁移是活细胞的重要特征之一。它在具有靶向定位特异性的治疗性细胞移植中也起着重要作用。为了增强细胞迁移能力，人们用石墨烯组装了一种神经细胞刺激器，石墨烯是一种二维纳米碳材料，在细胞培养皿的盖玻片上形成透明电极。这种透明刺激器对神经细胞施加电场刺激。这种带有石墨烯电极的新型透明电场刺激器（TEFS）的优点包括透明度，因为少数层的石墨烯是光学透明的，以及生物相容性，因为盖玻片涂有层粘连蛋白。本文报道，特定强度的恒定电场刺激有助于神经细胞的迁移，并且使电极上细胞行为的可见性比任何其他现有的带有金属电极的细胞刺激器都要好得多。刺激细胞的电场强度在4.5 mV/mm至450 mV/mm之间变化。当在45 mV/mm的电场强度下持续施加电场刺激4小时时，与没有电场刺激的对照条件相比，神经细胞的迁移能力显著增强。因此，测试了具有纳米厚度石墨烯的TEFS在体外调节神经细胞迁移能力的可行性。结果表明，电场刺激可以增强神经细胞的排列、细胞间耦合和网络形成，并且可应用于细胞移植以提高治疗效果。
