Effect of a nerve graft substitute single-walled carbon nanotubes on rat pheochromocytoma cells

Abstract

Carbon nanotubes (CNTs) were extensively explored for their beneficial use in nervous system tissue engineering. However, an important concern regarding the use of CNTs is their toxicity during the interaction between cells and the nano particles. The rat pheochromocytoma cell line (PC12) was co-cultured with three types of single-walled carbon nanotubes (SWNTs), purified raw SWNTs (C), hydroxyl purified SWNTs (C-OH) and carboxyl purified SWNTs (C-COOH) at 25 µg/mL and 100 µg/ml. The experimental results revealed that SWNTs at the concentration below 100 µg/mL did not affect the cell viability. Notably, powerful antioxidant system in nerous system tissue is able to counteract with the toxicity of CNTs, which is characterized by the prominently enhanced expression of main antioxidant enzymes (catalase (CAT), superoxide dismutase (SOD), glutathione peroxidase (GPx) and glutathione-S-transferase (GST)). Therefore, we believe that CNTs can be good candidates for the fabrication of biomedical scaffolds for the nerve tissue repair.