NEC Friday Morning Seminar
In person in Sears 439
Speaker: Grace Burkhart
Advisors: Dr. Horst von Recum and Dr. Jeffrey Capadona
Title: Reducing microbes and neuroinflammation at intracortical microelectrode implant site using anti-microbial coatings
Abstract:
Intracortical microelectrodes allow for the recording of neural signals in the brain but have decreased recording performance over time. This failure is due in part to the body’s neuroinflammatory response. One consequence of microelectrode implantation is the disruption of the blood-brain barrier. Prior work in the Capadona lab has found that this disruption of the blood-brain barrier after microelectrode implantation allows infiltration of gut-derived bacteria to the implant site. Systemic antibiotic treatment increased recording performance in the acute phase, but showed decreased recording performance in the chronic phase as compared to control. Therefore, there is a need for an antimicrobial treatment directly to the implant site to reduce invasive bacteria, reduce neuroinflammation, and ultimately improve chronic recording performance. This project focuses on growing anti-microbial Titania Nanotube Arrays (TNAs) onto nonfunctional intracortical microelectrodes to investigate the effect of the coating on the abundance of invasive microbes and the neuroinflammatory response at the implant site. We found that TNA-Coated microelectrodes are able to reduce microbe abundance at both acute and chronic timepoints and have fewer significantly expressed neuroinflammatory genes than uncoated microelectrodes at both timepoints. TNA-coated microelectrodes show promise as an antimicrobial platform capable of drug release to reduce neuroinflammation at the implant site.