TY - JOUR
T1 - Peripheral nerve repair through multi-luminal biosynthetic implants
AU - Tansey, K. E.
AU - Seifert, J. L.
AU - Botterman, B.
AU - Delgado, M. R.
AU - Romero, M. I.
N1 - Funding Information:
We thank P. Galvan-Garcia, S. Pierce, C. Smith, L. Watterkote, D. Muirhead, M. Allen, R. Sharma, and R. Daniel for technical assistance. This work was funded by the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board and Texas Scottish Rite Hospital for Children Intramural Grants (MIR).
PY - 2011/6
Y1 - 2011/6
N2 - Peripheral nerve damage is routinely repaired by autogenic nerve grafting, often leading to less than optimal functional recovery at the expense of healthy donor nerves. Alternative repair strategies use tubular scaffolds to guide the regeneration of damaged nerves, but despite the progress made on improved structural materials for the nerve tubes, functional recovery remains incomplete. We developed a biosynthetic nerve implant (BNI) consisting of a hydrogel-based transparent multichannel scaffold with luminar collagen matrix as a 3-D substrate for nerve repair. Using a rat sciatic nerve injury model we showed axonal regeneration through the BNI to be histologically comparable to the autologous nerve repair. At 10 weeks post-injury, nerve defects repaired with collagen-filled, single lumen tubes formed single nerve cables, while animals that received the multi-luminal BNIs showed multiple nerve cables and the formation of a perineurial-like layer within the available microchannels. Total numbers of myelinated and unmyelinated axons in the BNI were increased 3-fold and 30%, respectively, compared to collagen tubes. The recovery of reflexive movement confirmed the functional regeneration of both motor and sensory neurons. This study supports the use of multi-luminal BNIs as a viable alternative to autografts in the repair of nerve gap injuries.
AB - Peripheral nerve damage is routinely repaired by autogenic nerve grafting, often leading to less than optimal functional recovery at the expense of healthy donor nerves. Alternative repair strategies use tubular scaffolds to guide the regeneration of damaged nerves, but despite the progress made on improved structural materials for the nerve tubes, functional recovery remains incomplete. We developed a biosynthetic nerve implant (BNI) consisting of a hydrogel-based transparent multichannel scaffold with luminar collagen matrix as a 3-D substrate for nerve repair. Using a rat sciatic nerve injury model we showed axonal regeneration through the BNI to be histologically comparable to the autologous nerve repair. At 10 weeks post-injury, nerve defects repaired with collagen-filled, single lumen tubes formed single nerve cables, while animals that received the multi-luminal BNIs showed multiple nerve cables and the formation of a perineurial-like layer within the available microchannels. Total numbers of myelinated and unmyelinated axons in the BNI were increased 3-fold and 30%, respectively, compared to collagen tubes. The recovery of reflexive movement confirmed the functional regeneration of both motor and sensory neurons. This study supports the use of multi-luminal BNIs as a viable alternative to autografts in the repair of nerve gap injuries.
KW - Biosynthetic nerve implant
KW - Collagen
KW - Multi-luminal nerve repair
KW - Peripheral nerve regeneration
KW - Sensory fiber regeneration
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U2 - 10.1007/s10439-011-0277-6
DO - 10.1007/s10439-011-0277-6
M3 - Article
C2 - 21347549
AN - SCOPUS:79958819182
SN - 0090-6964
VL - 39
SP - 1815
EP - 1828
JO - Annals of biomedical engineering
JF - Annals of biomedical engineering
IS - 6
ER -