Tissue engineered alternatives to nerve transplantation for repair of peripheral nervous system injuries

Midha, R., Shoichet, M.S., Dalton, P.D., Cao, X., Munro, C.A., Noble, J. and Wong, M.K.K. (2001) Tissue engineered alternatives to nerve transplantation for repair of peripheral nervous system injuries. Transplantation Proceedings, 33 (1-2), 612-615. (doi:10.1016/S0041-1345(00)02167-9).

Abstract

To date the best regenerative strategies to repair peripheral nerve injuries (PNI) have used peripheral nerve grafts.[1] However, this strategy is inherently flawed, requiring that a second injury be created to harvest the tissue for the primary injury repair. A better strategy would be to prepare a synthetic graft that mimics the properties of a peripheral nerve graft. Non-nerve biologic tissue and synthetic biodegradable material as bridges for neural repair have been utilized for over a century (reviewed by Doolabh et al [2]). Although offering considerable promise, artificial conduits have had only limited success, possibly due to their simple design and the lack of multiple stimuli of regeneration. In developing a bioengineered nerve graft, we have been systematically investigating a number of strategies to optimize nerve regeneration through tubular devices. We report our initial results with the use of bioengineered nerve grafts for repair of PNI in a rat model.

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