Neurons Are Able to Internalize Soluble Carbon Nanotubes: New Opportunities or Old Risks?

Dealing with Central Nervous System (CNS) health care and repair strategies is a challenging task, due to the intrinsic complexity and the restricted access of the mammalian CNS. This challenge is emphasized by the fact that certain neuropathologies have a high emotional impact in our society, such as Parkinson’s or Alzheimer’s diseases, while others have devastating effects due to their high degree of aggressiveness, such as the case of brain tumors. In addition, the cause of many CNS disorders is unknown and in many instances there are no effective treatments. Due to the lack of effective self-repair mechanisms in the adult, CNS damage results in functional deficits that are too often irreversible. However, modern technologies offer exciting new perspectives in CNS health care, ranging from the possibility of early intervention to limit the extent of a lesion, to the prospect of providing some measure of CNS repair.[1,2] In the field of clinical neuroscience, the use of nanoparticles or nanodevices to perform target-specific delivery of drugs, even in hardly accessible body districts, is promising and widely accepted.[3] From the biological point of view, the size of nanodevices might facilitate cellular internalization, minimizing the interference with intracellular structures and activities. Here, we briefly address recent preclinical studies that investigated the biological impact of functionalized CNT when internalized by neurons in the perspective of employing such materials for molecular sensing, diagnostics or drug delivery devices in modern neuroscience.