Spinal cord injury (SCI) is a devastating
health condition that
may lead to permanent disabilities and death. Understanding the pathophysiological
perspectives of traumatic SCI is essential to define mechanisms that
can help in designing recovery strategies. Since central nervous system
tissues are notorious for their deficient ability to heal, efforts
have been made to identify solutions to aid in restoration of the
spinal cord tissues and thus its function. The two main approaches
proposed to address this issue are neuroprotection and neuro-regeneration.
Neuroprotection involves administering drugs to restore the injured
microenvironment to normal after SCI. As for the neuro-regeneration
approach, it focuses on axonal sprouting for functional recovery of
the injured neural tissues and damaged axons. Despite the progress
made in the field, neural regeneration treatment after SCI is still
unsatisfactory owing to the disorganized way of axonal growth and
extension. Nanomedicine and tissue engineering are considered promising
therapeutic approaches that enhance axonal growth and directionality
through implanting or injecting of the biomaterial scaffolds. One
of these recent approaches is nanofibrous scaffolds that are used
to provide physical support to maintain directional axonal growth
in the lesion site. Furthermore, these preferable tissue-engineered
substrates can afford axonal regeneration by mimicking the extracellular
matrix of the neural tissues in terms of biological, chemical, and
architectural characteristics. In this review, we discuss the regenerative
approach using nanofibrous scaffolds with a focus on their fabrication
methods and their properties that define their functionality performed
to heal the neural tissue efficiently.
We report on a novel carbon-based nanocomposite made of reduced graphene oxide/titania nanotubes (RGO/TNT) with excellent conductivity and absorptivity for the sensitive electrochemical determination of Hg(ii) as a water pollutant.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.