Question: how would graphene help treat a degenerative disease such as dementia?

Christopher Bullock answered on 14 Jun 2017:

Hi Catriona and Emily,

I am using graphene in two ways – designing neuroelectrodes to connect the brain to electronic devices and using graphene for tissue engineering. Tissue engineering is when we use stem cells to try to literally grow new tissues (the building blocks of organs). Using tissue engineering, it may be possible to replace parts of people’s bodies that stop functioning properly (for example, growing new cartilage for the knees of someone with arthritis) – this is really relevant for degenerative disease. This technology is really early in its development and is not that close to being used in the hospital (we will get there though!).

Neuroelectrodes on the other hand already can be used to directly treat some diseases, like Parkinson’s and can be used to control things like prosthetic arms with your mind. The point that I am trying to make is that graphene can be used to potentially help patients with a wide variety of degenerative diseases but dementia is an extremely difficult one to tackle.

Dementia is one of the biggest problems facing our society. Unfortunately, we dont yet understand how and why it happens (but there are lots of scientists working on it). For this reason, I don’t think my neuroelectrodes will be used to treat dementia for at least the next 20 years or so (you have to understand a disease to be able to treat it).

However, there have been some studies done by the US air force, where they have been using electrical stimulation of the brain to increase the concentration of their fighter pilots. Again, we don’t completely understand why this works, but it does. It is possible that the same technology could be helpful to people with dementia (to improve their focus) but this has not been tested. My job is just to make electrical stimulation work as well as it can for the many diseases that are already treated by this technology.