Impact of nanoparticles on neuron biology: current research trends

Abstract

Nanoparticles have enormous applications in textiles, cosmetics, electronics, and pharmaceuticals. But due to their exceptional physical and chemical properties, particularly antimicrobial, anticancer, antibacterial, anti-inflammatory properties, nanoparticles have many potential applications in diagnosis as well as in the treatment of various diseases. Over the past few years, nanoparticles have been extensively used to investigate their response on the neuronal cells. These nanoparticles cause stem cells to differentiate into neuronal cells and promote neuronal cell survivability and neuronal cell growth and expansion. The nanoparticles have been tested both in in vitro and in vivo models. The nanoparticles with various shapes, sizes, and chemical compositions mostly produced stimulatory effects on neuronal cells, but there are few that can cause inhibitory effects on the neuronal cells. In this review, we discuss stimulatory and inhibitory effects of various nanoparticles on the neuronal cells. The aim of this review was to summarize different effects of nanoparticles on the neuronal cells and try to understand the differential response of various nanoparticles. This review provides a bird’s eye view approach on the effects of various nanoparticles on neuronal differentiation, neuronal survivability, neuronal growth, neuronal cell adhesion, and functional and behavioral recovery. Finally, this review helps the researchers to understand the different roles of nanoparticles (stimulatory and inhibitory) in neuronal cells to develop effective therapeutic and diagnostic strategies for neurodegenerative diseases.

Magnetic Iron Oxide Nanoparticles: Synthesis, Characterization and Functionalization for Biomedical Applications in the Central Nervous System

“…In general, IONPs are assumed to be biocompatible, but upon intracellular degradation, IONPs do release iron ions, influencing iron homeostasis at general body level. Especially, due to the high vulnerability of CNS for iron imbalance, much work still has to be done to fully understand how different types of IONPs could affect the brain, BBB (see Figure 10) and what potential adverse effects on CNS can derive from their exposure [12,107]. This is particularly critical in brain neurodegenerative processes as iron homeostasis unbalance impact on the evolution of the diseases or could be involved in the pathogenesis mechanisms [6,108,109].…”

“…Moreover, since the synthesis methods affect the IONP size distribution, the degree of structural defects, the surface chemistry, and the magnetic behavior, they finally also determine the interaction with biological barriers—such as BBB and lipid bilayer of a cell membrane—and the consequent biocompatibility in the living organisms [10,11]. Furthermore, the iron content in IONPs has a key role in the general iron homeostasis of the body and in the CNS environment, highly sensitive to iron imbalance, especially in neurodegenerative diseases [12].…”

An Experimental Investigation of Ultraweak Photon Emission from Adult Murine Neural Stem Cells

“…However, nanoparticles have several beneficial properties, these also can produce serious hazard and toxic effects on cells. AgNPs are among the most widely used and investigated nanoparticles in diverse areas 57 as well as in neurological researches 58 . For example, Kaur and Tikoo 59 reported that the cytotoxicity effect of AgNPs depended on dose, surface potential of nanoparticles, and cells type in skin epithelial A431, lung epithelial A549 and murine macrophages RAW264.7 cells.…”

“…Austin et al 63 investigated the effect of silver on pregnant mice and fetuses after intravenous injections of 10 nm AgNPs or soluble silver nitrate (AgNO 3 ) that they found a remarkable silver accumulation in maternal liver, spleen and visceral yolk sac (VYS), which may have harmful effect on embryonic growth but insignificant in fetuses. In fact, despite beneficial effects and potential applications of nanoparticles such as stimulation of neuronal cell proliferation, axonal growth, neuronal cell adhesion, neuroprotection, and differentiation of stem cells into neuronal cells, they also have seversl harmful effects 58 such as cytotoxic effects mainly via unregulated redox processes 57,58 . Perhaps, investigation of UPE from neural cells be a possible method elucidating the effets of various nanoparticles in neural cells.…”

Nanomaterial integration into the scaffolding materials for nerve tissue engineering: a review

“…Nanomaterials provide alternative strategies to affect neuronal behaviors such as differentiation, proliferation, and electrical properties. It has been shown that the nanomaterials can activate the signaling pathways and transcription factors that are responsible for neural proliferation and differentiation (Khan et al 2018;Polak and Shefi 2015). Nano-constructs could be utilized in various ways.…”