Analysis of neural cell behaviour on anisotropic electrically conductive polymeric biodegradable scaffolds reinforced with carbon nanotubes

The advent of biocompatible and biodegradable scaffolds has opened up a plethora possibilities in neural tissue engineering. An emerging approach to overcome some existing drawbacks scaffold design functioning is natural conductive polymeric scaffold. It analogous the extracellular matrix provides an environment conducive growth. This study focuses on fabrication soft scaffold, reinforced with multi-walled carbon nanotubes (MWCNTs) chitosan matrix, for directional neuronal were fabricated by varying nanofiller content as 0.5, 1.0 2.0. wt%, which aligned alternating bias electric field compared their random counterpart. uniform distribution nanofillers good combinatorial bonding, alignment MWCNTs resulted enhancement mechanical properties electrical conductivity comparison randomly arranged reinforcements. Additionally, degradation kinetics was tuned regeneration regime peripheral nerves. After physical characterization, biocompatibility designed evaluated culturing HT-22 cells scaffolds. Along biocompatibility, suitability anisotropic growth cultured MWCNT–chitosan preferential direction neurite achieved chitosan-aligned MWCNT films improved are very encouraging potential use