Peripheral berve regeneration through nerve conduit composed of alginate-collagen-chitosan

Abstract

Although the peripheral nerve system has a relatively good regenerating capacity compared to the central nerve system, peripheral nerve repair remains a clinical challenge as restoration of normal nerve function is highly variable. Synthetic tubular nerve conduits were designed as an alternative repair method in order to replace the need for an isograft. These nerve conduits guide regenerating axons from the proximal toward the distal end, maintain within growth-promoting molecules released by the nerve stumps, and protect regenerating axons from infiltrating scar tissue. In this work, we prepared cinnamoylated alginate (CA)-collagen-chitosan nerve conduit using the lyophilization method to generate a controllable parallel channel in the center and then investigated its influence on peripheral nerve regeneration in an animal study. At 12 weeks after implantation, histological study showed that tissue cable was continuously bridging the gap of the sciatic nerve in all rats. Our newly developed nerve conduit is a promising tool for use in peripheral nerve regeneration and provides a suitable experimental model for future clinical application.

Evaluation of poly(3-hydroxybutyrate-co-3-hydroxyhexanoate) conduits for peripheral nerve regeneration

“…Biodegradable materials used in the nerve tissue engineering can be grossly divided into two groups. One consists of natural polymers such as collagen, gelatin, chitosan and alginate [15][16][17][18][19][20][21][22], and the other includes synthetic polymers such as PGA, PLLA, etc. [8][9][10][11].…”

“…In recent years, enormous efforts have been made to fabricate the synthetic nerve conduits for the repair of peripheral nerve defects, and different kinds of biomaterials have been studied, such as polyglycolic acid (PGA) [2], poly(L-lactide-coglycolide) (PLGA) [8,9], poly(3-hydroxybutyrate) (PHB) [10,11], gelatin [12][13][14], collagen [4,8,[15][16][17][18], chitosan [2,[19][20][21][22] and silk [23,24]. And it is still an active area of intense research to seek new biomaterials with more favourable properties and more flexible processing methods [24].…”

A comparison of the performance of mono- and bi-component electrospun conduits in a rat sciatic model

“…A large body of research has been conducted to investigate different kinds of biomaterials for neural tissue engineering including, synthetic materials such as poly(glycolic acid) (PGA) [7], poly( l -lactide-co-glycolide) (PLGA) [8,9], poly(3-hydroxybutyrate) (PHB) [10,11] and natural biopolymers such as gelatin [12–14], collagen [3,8,15–19], chitosan [7,20–23] and silk [24,25]. Synthetic materials are attractive as neural tissue engineering scaffolds because of the ease in tailoring the degradation rate and mechanical properties of these materials to suit the application.…”

The development of a normalization method for comparing nerve regeneration effectiveness among different graft types

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“…Data on sciatic functional index (SFI), axon count, and density at the proximal, middle, and distal points of the nerve, compound muscle action potential (CMAP), and NCV for the rat sciatic nerve model from 62 publications (Chamberlain et al, 1998;Trigg et al, 1998;Evans et al, 1999;Hadlock et al, 2001;Valero-Cabré et al, 2001;Wang et al, 2001;Yoshii and Oka, 2001;Evans et al, 2002;Okajima et al, 2002;Sakiyama-Elbert, 2002;Lee et al, 2003;Yu and Bellamkonda, 2003;Bini et al, 2004;Ahmed et al, 2005;Belkas et al, 2005;Chiang et al, 2005;Kim et al, 2005;Chang and Hsu, 2006;Hou et al, 2006;Ikeguchi et al, 2006;Chen et al, 2007;Nie et al, 2007;Rupp, 2007;Vleggeert-Lankamp et al, 2007;Waitayawinyu et al, 2007;Yang et al, 2007;Dodla and Bellamkonda, 2008;Fernandes et al, 2008;Zhang et al, 2008;Bian et al, 2009;Hsu et al, 2009;Hu et al, 2009;Shen et al, 2009;Sun et al, 2009;Walsh et al, 2009;Whitlock et al, 2009;Wood et al, 2009;Huang et al, 2010;Koh et al, 2010;…”