Enhanced Differentiation of Human Neural Stem Cells into Neurons on Graphene

TLDR: It is suggested that graphene has a unique surface property that can promote the differentiation of hNSCs toward neurons rather than glia, which should open up tremendous opportunities in stem cell research, neuroscience, and regenerative medicine.

Abstract: However, most previous studies report that hNSCs, without biochemical motifs or co-culturing, differentiated more towards glial cells than neurons. [ 6–8 ] On the other hand, although graphene has attracted much interest for biological applications due to its exotic properties such as biocompatibility, electric conductivity, and transparency, [ 9–12 ] it has not been explored for neural stem cell behavior, yet. Herein, we report a graphene substrate that enhanced the differentiation of hNSCs into neurons. Microarray studies were performed to explore a plausible explanation for this effect. Furthermore, we demonstrated an electrical stimulation on the cells differentiated from hNSCs using graphene as a transparent electrode. Our fi ndings suggest that graphene has a unique surface property that can promote the differentiation of hNSCs toward neurons rather than glia, which should open up tremendous opportunities in stem cell research, neuroscience, and regenerative medicine. Our experimental procedure is summarized in Figure 1 . Graphene was synthesized on a large scale and transferred onto a glass substrate, following a previously reported method (see also Figure S1 and S2 in the Supporting Information). [ 10,11 ] The graphene fi lm on glass was then placed into a laminin solution (20 μ g mL − 1 in culture media for 4 h) so that laminin molecules adhered to both the graphene and the glass and helped hNSC attachment. The hNSCs were seeded on the substrate