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Proliferation and Cluster Analysis of Neurons and Glial Cell Organization on Nanocolumnar TiN Substrates

Biomaterials employed for neural stimulation, as well as brain/machine interfaces, offer
great perspectives to combat neurodegenerative diseases, while application of lab-on-a-chip devices
such as multielectrode arrays is a promising alternative to assess neural function in vitro. For
bioelectronic monitoring, nanostructured microelectrodes are required, which exhibit an increased
surface area where the detection sensitivity is not reduced by the self-impedance of the electrode.
In our study, we investigated the interaction of neurons (SH-SY5Y) and glial cells (U-87 MG) with
nanocolumnar titanium nitride (TiN) electrode materials in comparison to TiN with larger surface
grains, gold, and indium tin oxide (ITO) substrates. Glial cells showed an enhanced proliferation
on TiN materials; however, these cells spread evenly distributed over all the substrate surfaces. By
contrast, neurons proliferated fastest on nanocolumnar TiN and formed large cell agglomerations. We
implemented a radial autocorrelation function of cellular positions combined with various clustering
algorithms. These combined analyses allowed us to quantify the largest cluster on nanocolumnar TiN;
however, on ITO and gold, neurons spread more homogeneously across the substrates. As SH-SY5Y
cells tend to grow in clusters under physiologic conditions, our study proves nanocolumnar TiN as a
potential bioactive material candidate for the application of microelectrodes in contact with neurons.
To this end, the employed K-means clustering algorithm together with radial autocorrelation analysis
is a valuable tool to quantify cell-surface interaction and cell organization to evaluate biomaterials’
performance in vitro

Identiferoai:union.ndltd.org:DRESDEN/oai:qucosa:de:qucosa:88965
Date11 January 2024
CreatorsAbend, Alice, Steele, Chelsie, Schmidt, Sabine, Frank, Ronny, Jahnke, Heinz-Georg, Zink, Mareike
PublisherMDPI
Source SetsHochschulschriftenserver (HSSS) der SLUB Dresden
LanguageEnglish
Detected LanguageEnglish
Typeinfo:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersion, doc-type:article, info:eu-repo/semantics/article, doc-type:Text
Rightsinfo:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess
Relation6249, 10.3390/ijms21176249

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