The Lund University in Sweden has developed absorbent "spaghetti" like polymer that are tissue-friendly. This new material will help brain cells grow more naturally than in flat laboratory glass dish.
Usually, the brain cells are being grown in flat laboratory glass dish. Scientists know that the brain cells do not grow naturally because the brain cells are in three-dimensional places in the brains. They do not grow or propagate naturally in flat areas as the layers of cell types are being arranged in the laboratory' flat glass dish. The brain cells in the body are more mixed than how they are formed in the glass dish in laboratories, reported Science Daily. Because of this, researchers all over the world have tried creating three-dimensional materials and laboratory things to grow it naturally.
Recently, the Lund researchers have tried using electrospinning to create the spaghetti-like polymer to grow the brain cells naturally and it worked perfectly fine. "Electrospinning is actually an old technique, which has received a recent boost. It proved to be a good way to produce small nanostructures for biological and medical purposes", explained biophysicist Fredrik Johansson, who works closely with Ulrica Englund Johansson's group.
The spaghetti-like polymer that scientists used is medically approved. Also, the structure they built is very flexible as it can be shaped however it is needed to be, News Medical stated. The researchers compared it to spaghetti. The strings can be tangled and form a ball like how spaghetti looks like when it is cooked. It can also be like an uncooked spaghetti and form straight parallel lines when they want to get the neurite of brain cells to grow in a certain direction, said Fredrik Johansson.
The three-dimensional spaghetti-like polymer material showed the maturation of stem cells into glial cells and neurons. It has also developed long neurite outgrowths while blending with it naturally, said Ulrica Englund Johansson. If this structure test will be successful, electrospinning will be used in many other materials for growing of brain cells. It will also help the medical industry and will probably support many other researchers.
