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Electrospun micro- and nanofiber tubes for functional nervous regeneration in sciatic nerve transections

BACKGROUND: 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 patient's movements by interrupting his motor-sensory pathways. In the last few decades tissue e...

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Autores principales: Panseri, Silvia, Cunha, Carla, Lowery, Joseph, Del Carro, Ubaldo, Taraballi, Francesca, Amadio, Stefano, Vescovi, Angelo, Gelain, Fabrizio
Formato: Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: BioMed Central 2008
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2358889/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18405347
http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/1472-6750-8-39
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author Panseri, Silvia
Cunha, Carla
Lowery, Joseph
Del Carro, Ubaldo
Taraballi, Francesca
Amadio, Stefano
Vescovi, Angelo
Gelain, Fabrizio
author_facet Panseri, Silvia
Cunha, Carla
Lowery, Joseph
Del Carro, Ubaldo
Taraballi, Francesca
Amadio, Stefano
Vescovi, Angelo
Gelain, Fabrizio
author_sort Panseri, Silvia
collection PubMed
description BACKGROUND: 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 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 patient's movement. Electrospinning technique makes it possible to spin microfiber and nanofiber flexible tubular scaffolds composed of a number of natural and synthetic components, showing high porosity and remarkable surface/volume ratio. 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 implantated 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 the 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 concurrence with regenerated fibers. No significant inflammatory response has been found. Neural tracers revealed the re-establishment of functional neuronal connections and evoked potential results showed the reinnervation of the target muscles in the majority of the treated animals. CONCLUSION: Corroborating previous works, this study indicates 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, like tuning the mechanical properties of the tubular structure or providing biomimetic functionalization. Moreover, these guidance conduits can be loaded with various fillers like collagen, fibrin, or self-assembling peptide gels or loaded with neurotrophic factors and seeded with cells. Electrospun scaffolds can also be synthesized in different micro-architectures to regenerate lesions in other tissues like skin and bone.
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spelling pubmed-23588892008-04-29 Electrospun micro- and nanofiber tubes for functional nervous regeneration in sciatic nerve transections Panseri, Silvia Cunha, Carla Lowery, Joseph Del Carro, Ubaldo Taraballi, Francesca Amadio, Stefano Vescovi, Angelo Gelain, Fabrizio BMC Biotechnol Research Article BACKGROUND: 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 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 patient's movement. Electrospinning technique makes it possible to spin microfiber and nanofiber flexible tubular scaffolds composed of a number of natural and synthetic components, showing high porosity and remarkable surface/volume ratio. 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 implantated 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 the 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 concurrence with regenerated fibers. No significant inflammatory response has been found. Neural tracers revealed the re-establishment of functional neuronal connections and evoked potential results showed the reinnervation of the target muscles in the majority of the treated animals. CONCLUSION: Corroborating previous works, this study indicates 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, like tuning the mechanical properties of the tubular structure or providing biomimetic functionalization. Moreover, these guidance conduits can be loaded with various fillers like collagen, fibrin, or self-assembling peptide gels or loaded with neurotrophic factors and seeded with cells. Electrospun scaffolds can also be synthesized in different micro-architectures to regenerate lesions in other tissues like skin and bone. BioMed Central 2008-04-11 /pmc/articles/PMC2358889/ /pubmed/18405347 http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/1472-6750-8-39 Text en Copyright © 2008 Panseri et al; licensee BioMed Central Ltd. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0 This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License ( (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0) ), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
spellingShingle Research Article
Panseri, Silvia
Cunha, Carla
Lowery, Joseph
Del Carro, Ubaldo
Taraballi, Francesca
Amadio, Stefano
Vescovi, Angelo
Gelain, Fabrizio
Electrospun micro- and nanofiber tubes for functional nervous regeneration in sciatic nerve transections
title Electrospun micro- and nanofiber tubes for functional nervous regeneration in sciatic nerve transections
title_full Electrospun micro- and nanofiber tubes for functional nervous regeneration in sciatic nerve transections
title_fullStr Electrospun micro- and nanofiber tubes for functional nervous regeneration in sciatic nerve transections
title_full_unstemmed Electrospun micro- and nanofiber tubes for functional nervous regeneration in sciatic nerve transections
title_short Electrospun micro- and nanofiber tubes for functional nervous regeneration in sciatic nerve transections
title_sort electrospun micro- and nanofiber tubes for functional nervous regeneration in sciatic nerve transections
topic Research Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2358889/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18405347
http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/1472-6750-8-39
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