Electrospun micro- and nanofiber tubes for functionalnervous regeneration in sciatic nerve transections
Although many nerve prostheses have been proposed in recent years, in the case of consistent loss of nervous tissue, peripheral nerve injury is still a traumatic pathology that may impair the patient's movements by interrupting his motor-sensory pathways. In the last few decades, tissue engineering has opened the door to new approaches.
However most of them make use of rigid channel guides that may cause cell loss due to the lack of physiological local stresses exerted over the nervous tissue during the patient's movement. The electrospinning technique makes it possible to spin microfiber and nanofiber flexible tubular scaffolds, showing high porosity and surface/volume ratio.
They are composed of a number of natural and synthetic components.
Results: In this study we used electrospun tubes made of biodegradable polymers (a blend of PLGA/PCL) to regenerate a 10-mm nerve gap in a rat sciatic nerve in vivo. Experimental groups comprise lesioned animals (control group) and lesioned animals subjected to guide conduits implantation at the severed nerve stumps, where the tubular scaffolds are filled with saline solution.
Four months after surgery sciatic nerves failed to reconnect the two stumps of transected nerves in control animal group. In most of the treated animals the electrospun tubes induced nervous regeneration and functional reconnection of the two severed sciatic nerve tracts.
Myelination and collagen IV deposition have been detected in concomitance with regenerated fibers. No significant inflammatory response has been found.
Neural tracers revealed the re-establishment of functional neuronal connections and evoked potential recording showed the re-innervation of the target muscles in the majority of the treated animals.
Conclusions: We proved that electrospun tubes, with no additional biological coating or drug loading treatment, are promising scaffolds for functional nervous regeneration.
They can be knitted in meshes and various frames depending on the cytoarchitecture of the tissue to be regenerated. The versatility of this technique gives room for further scaffold improvements, tuning their mechanical properties to provide biomimetic functionalizations.
Moreover, these guidance conduits can be further filled with various fillers like collagen, fibrin or self-assembling peptide gels or loaded with neurotrophic factors and seeded with cells. Electrospun scaffolds can be synthesized in different micro-architectures to regenerate lesions in other tissues like skin and bone.
Author: Silvia Panseri, Carla Cunha, Joseph Lowery, Ubaldo Del Carro, Francesca Taraballi, Stefano Amadio, Angelo Vescovi and Fabrizio Gelain
Credits/Source: BMC Biotechnology 2008, 8:39
Published on: 2008-04-12
|
Limited copyright is granted for you to use and/or republish any story on this site for
any legitimate media purpose as long as you reference 7thSpace as the source. Please
make sure to read our disclaimer prior to contacting us.
|
|
Social Bookmarking
Digg this! | Post to del.icio.us | Post to Furl | Add to Netscape | Add to Yahoo! | Rojo
|
|
