Three-Dimensional Graphene Enhances Neural Stem Cell Proliferation Through Metabolic Regulation

Abstract

Graphene consists of two-dimensional sp2-bonded carbon sheets, a single or a few layers thick, which has attracted considerable interest in recent years due to its good conductivity and biocompatibility. Three-dimensional graphene foam (3DG) has been demonstrated to be a robust scaffold for culturing neural stem cells (NSCs) in vitro that not only supports NSCs growth, but also maintains cells in a more active proliferative state than 2D graphene films and ordinary glass. In addition, 3DG can enhance NSCs differentiation into astrocytes and especially neurons. However, the underlying mechanisms behind 3DG's effects are still poorly understood. Metabolism is the fundamental characteristic of life and provides substances for building and powering the cell. Metabolic activity is tightly tied with the proliferation, differentiation, and self-renewal of stem cells. This study focused on the metabolic reconfiguration of stem cells induced by culturing on 3DG. This study established the correlation between metabolic reconfiguration metabolomics with NSCs cell proliferation rate on different scaffold. Several metabolic processes have been uncovered in association with the proliferation change of NSCs. Especially, culturing on 3DG triggered pathways that increased amino acid incorporation and enhanced glucose metabolism. These data suggested a potential association between graphene and pathways involved in Parkinson's disease. Our work provides a very useful starting point for further studies of NSC fate determination on 3DG.

Oriented Neural Spheroid Formation and Differentiation of Neural Stem Cells Guided by Anisotropic Inverse Opals

“…With the development of biomaterials, topography has become a promising physical cue for manipulating cell behaviors during neural regeneration (Guo et al, 2016;He et al, 2016;Jiang et al, 2016;Severino et al, 2016;Liu et al, 2018;Han et al, 2019;Tang et al, 2019;Xia et al, 2019;Fang et al, 2020). The topography of these materials influences the mechanosensory apparatus and the spatiotemporal dynamics of the cells (Chen et al, 2014), and these cell-material interactions play a key factor in cell behavior regulation (Guilak et al, 2009;Zangi et al, 2016).…”

The Influence of Cochlear Implant-Based Electric Stimulation on the Electrophysiological Characteristics of Cultured Spiral Ganglion Neurons

“…Electrical stimulation generated by CI itself may also be one of the important factors to affect the survival of residual SGNs. Previous studies have reported that the electric conductive biomaterials and the electrical stimulation have very obvious effects on regulating the proliferation and differentiation of neural stem cells [ 44 , 45 ], as well as on regulating the survival and maturation of neurons, including SGNs [ 46 ]. In this study, we found that electrical stimulation could decrease the I Ca but had no effect on the action potential firing in cultured SGNs.…”

Conductive Biomaterials as Substrates for Neural Stem Cells Differentiation towards Neuronal Lineage Cells

“…However, a study showed that 3D graphene structures enhances NSCs proliferation through glucose metabolism. [ 176 ] Recently, NSCs were seeded as a model on graphene substrates to assess the changes in resting and action membrane potentials in proliferation and differentiation states. [ 177 ] The basic membrane electrical parameters in terms of capacitance and input resistance were not changed; while the resting membrane potentials of cells were significantly negative at both proliferation and differentiation states.…”