Dr Louie Scott
About
My research project
Ultra-thin carbon nanotube networks - a platform for cardiac tissue engineering, electrical stimulation, and drug discoveryCardiovascular disease (CVD) is the number one global cause of death, accounting for approximately 31% of all deaths annually. Despite CVD’s continued burden on healthcare services, between 1990 and 2012 there was a general decline in the amount of research into CVDs. While research into CVDs is starting to increase again, basic research – interrogating the mechanisms behind CVDs – has shown the least growth. Part of the reason for this turbulent trend in research efforts is that cardiac cell types are notoriously challenging to culture ex vivo. Carbon nanotubes (CNTs), in combination with tissue engineering techniques, are uniquely suited to providing new reliable and dynamic experimental platforms for CVD research due to their versatility in biomaterial formulations, structural similarity to cardiac extracellular proteins and, most importantly, their electrical conductivity. Research thus far has created electrically conductive CNT scaffolds for cardiomyocytes (CMs), for use as a platform for cardiac disease modelling and pharmaceutical research. Here, a tissue culture scaffold consisting of thin, isotropic networks of CNTs was developed, that possesses optical transparency, resistivity in the MΩ range, nanoscale surface topography, and biocompatibility based on wettability. CMs grown on CNTs showed significantly enhanced contractile function, and expression of cardiac specific, contractile and adherence proteins. Further studies will look to investigate the mechanisms behind the enhanced contractile function of CMs on CNTs and the efficacy of paced electrical stimulation in eliciting arrhythmic disease phenotypes to provide proof-of-concept for this platform as a disease modelling system for pharmaceutical research and development into new therapies for CVDs.
Supervisors
Cardiovascular disease (CVD) is the number one global cause of death, accounting for approximately 31% of all deaths annually. Despite CVD’s continued burden on healthcare services, between 1990 and 2012 there was a general decline in the amount of research into CVDs. While research into CVDs is starting to increase again, basic research – interrogating the mechanisms behind CVDs – has shown the least growth. Part of the reason for this turbulent trend in research efforts is that cardiac cell types are notoriously challenging to culture ex vivo. Carbon nanotubes (CNTs), in combination with tissue engineering techniques, are uniquely suited to providing new reliable and dynamic experimental platforms for CVD research due to their versatility in biomaterial formulations, structural similarity to cardiac extracellular proteins and, most importantly, their electrical conductivity. Research thus far has created electrically conductive CNT scaffolds for cardiomyocytes (CMs), for use as a platform for cardiac disease modelling and pharmaceutical research. Here, a tissue culture scaffold consisting of thin, isotropic networks of CNTs was developed, that possesses optical transparency, resistivity in the MΩ range, nanoscale surface topography, and biocompatibility based on wettability. CMs grown on CNTs showed significantly enhanced contractile function, and expression of cardiac specific, contractile and adherence proteins. Further studies will look to investigate the mechanisms behind the enhanced contractile function of CMs on CNTs and the efficacy of paced electrical stimulation in eliciting arrhythmic disease phenotypes to provide proof-of-concept for this platform as a disease modelling system for pharmaceutical research and development into new therapies for CVDs.
Business, industry and community links
ResearchResearch interests
Carbon nanomaterials, materials science analytical techniques, cardiac tissue culture, biomaterials, cardiac tissue engineering, immunohistochemistry/immunofluorescence, and live cell fluorescence imaging.
Research interests
Carbon nanomaterials, materials science analytical techniques, cardiac tissue culture, biomaterials, cardiac tissue engineering, immunohistochemistry/immunofluorescence, and live cell fluorescence imaging.
Publications
Cardiovascular disease is currently the top global cause of death, however, research into new therapies is in decline. Tissue engineering is a solution to this crisis and in combination with the use of carbon nanotubes (CNTs), which have drawn recent attention as a biomaterial, could facilitate the development of more dynamic and complex in vitro models. CNTs' electrical conductivity and dimensional similarity to cardiac extracellular proteins provide a unique opportunity to deliver scaffolds with stimuli that mimic the native cardiac microenvironment in vitro more effectively. This systematic review aims to evaluate the use and efficacy of CNTs for cardiac tissue scaffolds and was conducted according to the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analysis (PRISMA) guidelines. Three databases were searched: PubMed, Scopus, and Web of Science. Papers resulting from these searches were then subjected to analysis against pre-determined inclusion and quality appraisal criteria. From 249 results, 27 manuscripts met the criteria and were included in this review. Neonatal rat cardiomyocytes were most commonly used in the experiments, with multi-walled CNTs being most common in tissue scaffolds. Immunofluorescence was the experimental technique most frequently used, which was employed for the staining of cardiac-specific proteins relating to contractile and electrophysiological function.