It has become a truism that one of the most promising methods to restore the central nervous system (CNS) in human health care is nerve tissue engineering. Nerve tissue engineering is a growing area in biomedical engineering developed to repair or replace the function of damaged, altered and severed neurons and neuronal tissue. Nerve tissue repair is a crucial concept in human health care with a direct impact on the quality of life.

Two of the most promising CNS reconstructive/repairing strategies are directed to a) provide a functional bridge through the damaged tissue and b) restore functions through the use of implantable assistive devices. a) Cell-free neural implants mainly consist of biomimetic materials, such as hydrogels incorporating biologically important macromolecules, to bring together structural and biological aspects of the natural extracellular matrix (Plant et al., 1997; Geller and Fawcett, 2002). Tissue-bridges have to provide a bioactive scaffold for axon regrowth and guidance to proper targets (Geller and Fawcett, 2002). Such supramolecular architectures should reproduce some physical characteristics of the extracellular matrix and finally the induction of significant glial scar, largely mediated by astrocytes, has to be minimized (Turner et al., 1999; Spence et al, 2002; Little et el, 2001; Krum et al, 1999). In designing new materials, it is also important to address the issue of their electrical properties. This might be as relevant as that of mechanical characteristics in favoring axonal outgrowth (Schmidt et al., 1997). b) The novel development of brain-machine interfaces capable of stimulating the cellular processes for learning and memory has been suggested as a solution of great relevance to develop new generations of cerebral implants. Recently, the potential usefulness of treatments by brain stimulations has been indicated in the control of Parkinson’s tremors (see Benabid et al., 2005, for a review). In that case, brain stimulation involves the insertion of metal electrodes deep in the brain to hit a precise neuro-anatomical target, believed to be central to the disease being treated.

In both these issues the design of new materials is crucial to provide progresses in the development of novel models of neuro-implantable devices.

Recent advancements in nanotechnologies offer a promising strategy to further develop the next-generation of materials to be used in neurobiology. Applications of carbon nanotubes (CNT) in the field of biotechnology have started to emerge, raising great hopes (Lin et al 2004; Bianco and Prato 2003). CNT have been proposed as components for DNA and protein (Wang et al, 2004), biosensors (Gooding et al 2003), cell surface biomimetics (Chen et al 2004) and as bioseparators and biocatalysts (Mitchell et al 2002). CNT have also been used as a new platform to detect antibodies associated with human autoimmune diseases with high specificity (Chen et al 2003). This finding paves the way to the development of carbon nanotube-based diagnostic devices for the discrimination and identification of different proteins from serum samples and in the fabrication of microarray devices for proteomic analyses.

Nanodimensioned fibers have excellent conductivity and high strength to weight ratios (Kuriger et al 2002; Lozano et al 2000). High conductivity is an interesting property since transfer of electrical signals is thought to improve nervous tissue operativity and regeneration (Heiduschka et al 1998; Kotwal et al 2001). Despite these premises, only few studies systematically approached the issue of interactions between living neurons and glial cells with substrates containing carbon nanofibres and/or carbon nanotubes (Hu et al 2004; Mattson et al 2000; McKenzie et al 2003; Webster et al 2004).

The NEURONANO proposal is unique in that expertise ranging from organic and surface chemistry, spectroscopy, electrophysiology, neurobiology, mathematical modeling are committed to the same objective, each group with well-suited tasks to perform. We involved  in the consortium a company that has evolved as one of the market-leaders of sophisticated products and high-speed data acquisition in the in vitro and in vivo field of “Neuro-Electronics”. 

This further strengthens the possibility by the consortium to identify promising technologies that satisfy an identified specific need and then bring together the necessary expertise and resources on a project-by-project basis to develop products with significant market potential.