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conferenceseries
.com
Volume 5, Issue 6 (Suppl)
J Mat. Sci.
ISSN: 2321-6212
Advanced Materials 2017
October 26-28, 2017
OCTOBER 26-28, 2017 OSAKA, JAPAN
13
TH
INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE ON
Advanced Materials and Nanotechnology
Flexible electronics: Toward growth factors delivery and electrical stimulation of cells for treatment
of neurodegenerative disorder
Dorna Esrafilzadeh
1
, Rouhollah Jalili
1, 2
, Binbin Zhang
2
, Alex R Harris
2
and Qingsheng Zhang
2
1
RMIT University, Australia
2
University of Wollongong, Australia
A
berrant neuronal growth underlies the prefrontal cortical (PFC) pathology of many neurodegenerative disorders. Current
treatments are inadequate and commonly cause severe side effects. Importantly, conventional pharmacotherapy strategies
have limited efficacy in treating PFC dis-regulation in neurodegenerative disorders. Electrical stimulation is a modern
treatment method which can include electroconvulsive therapy, Deep-Brain Stimulation (DBS) and epidural stimulation, etc.
Previous studied showed that the application of electrical stimulations promotes neuritis outgrowth resulted to inter neuronal
networking. Wide range of metallic microelectrodes composed of gold, steel, platinum etc. have been previously utilized to
perform electrical stimulation however, rigidity, incompatible mechanical properties, high initial impedance and low charge-
transfer capacity limit their application. Graphene and its derivatives are an exciting class of materials, which are utilized in
microelectrodes due to having excellent mechanical stability, electrical conductivity, biocompatibility, flexibility and ability
to fabricate and scale up. This work develops three-dimensional (3D) flexible electrode composed of 3D printed Reduced
Liquid Crystalline Graphene Oxide (rLCGO) on a polyurethane (PU) substrate. The flexible conducting electrode is used as
Host Template for Human Neural Stem Cells (hNSCs) development during proliferation and differentiation. The application
of electrical stimulation on hNSC using graphene/PU electrodes revealed promising results to improve neurites guidance
through 3D printed lines and enhanced cell-cell communication and networking.
dorna.esrafilzadeh@rmit.edu.auJ Mat. Sci. 2017, 5:6
DOI: 10.4172/2321-6212-C1-009