The Study Of Biocompatibility Of Multi-walled Carbon Nanotubes Modified By Wheat Germ Agglutinin

To meet the various needs of the applications in the biomedical field,appropriate modifications of carbon nanotubes’(CNTs)surface to achieve functionalizations are necessary.In this paper,we used wheat germ agglutinin(WGA)to modify two kinds of multi-walled carbon nanotubes(MWCNTs)with different surface properties.First,we studied the differences of the WGA adsorption capacity between two kinds of MWCNTs.Then we did hemolysis experiments of red blood cells(RBC)and cytotoxicity experiments of neural stem cells(NSCs).The hemolysis rates and cell viability were treated as an indicator of biocompatibility of the MWCNTs which modified by WGA.The results showed that although both kinds of MWCNTs occurred an adsorption with WGA under the same reaction conditions,but there is an obvious difference.In general,the adsorption capacity of p-MWCNTs is stronger than f-MWCNT.In the hemolysis experiments,f-MWCNTs caused much higher hemolysis rates than p-MWCNTs at the same concentration before modified by WGA.The two kinds of MWCNTs modified by WGA showed no significant difference on RBC compatibility.Relatived to the unmodified MWCNTs,the hemolysis rates all have decreased significantly and were less than 5%.It can be considered that after modifying by the WGA,both kinds of MWCNTs possessed better compatibility.In the cytotoxicity experiments,we found that MWCNTs’ toxicity was generated with a certain dose-related manner.As the incubating time increased,the cell viability decreased and p-MWCNTs showed higher cell survival rates compared with f-MWCNTs before modification.Although there showed no significant differences between the two groups of MWNCTs after modifying,but their cell compatibility were significantly improved.Based on the above results,we concluded that MWCNTs modified by WGA can improve its biocompatibility to some degree.