Comparison of neuronal cell adhesiveness of materials in the diX (Parylene) family

DiX C (or Parylene-C) has been widely used as a coating material to insulate neural electrodes in recent decades. However, its uses are limited due to its extremely low adhesiveness with neuronal cells. Other functional materials in the diX family, such as diX A, diX AM, and diX H, have been commercialized recently and would offer different features in biocompatibility from diX C. However, their cell adhesiveness remains unknown. In this work, we used an in vitro approach to investigate how the surface of each material in the diX family affects the degree of neuronal cell adhesiveness compared with a conventional culture dish of polystyrene (PS). The neuronal cell adhesiveness on diX AM and diX H was almost equivalent to that for the PS dish, whereas neuronal cells did not settle on the surface of diX C and diX A. Our results suggest that diX AM and diX H could provide another practical feature as a coating material for a scaffold in a substrate with any configuration in neural devices.