The impact of graphene on neural regenerative medicine.

Abstract

There is increasing interest in studying carbon-based nanomaterials (CBNs) for use in regenerative medicine. Some carbon crystalline structures, such as graphene, carbon nanotubes/nanofibers, boron nitride nanosheets/nanotubes and fullerenes, as well as disordered structures, such as diamond-like carbon, glass-like carbon, and amorphous carbon, are now being considered as promising scaffolds (Ferreira et al., 2015; Kabiri et al., 2015), and therefore, studies of their biocompatibilities have begun to be reported in recent years. There are recent examples of the successful use of graphene-based substrates as interfaces for neuronal growth while retaining neuronal signaling properties without alteration (Fabbro et al., 2015) or as a bioscaffold for neuronal regeneration after spinal cord injury (Palejwala et al., 2016); nevertheless, the potential of CBNs as a neural interfacing material for neural repair and regeneration remains poorly understood.