ProRegScaffold · Highly Biomimetic Proregenerative Scaffold for Personalized Nerve Repair

Highly Biomimetic Proregenerative Scaffold for Personalized Nerve Repair

Peripheral nerve injuries, which are common and can cause debilitating sensory sensing and motor dysfunction, pose challenges for tissue engineering and regenerative medicine as neural functions depend on their complex 3D structures and anisotropic mechanical properties. Peripheral nerve tissues include complicated nerve fibers with intricate microscale topography and highly hierarchical geometric structures ranging from micrometer to centimeter levels. Artificial scaffolds are promising alternatives to current gold-standard autograft methodologies without availability limitations and donor site morbidity. A desirable characteristic of these artificial scaffolds is the ability to allow the ingress of cells and control their subsequent differentiation and proliferation within the scaffolds. However, the current engineering technologies are limited in creating hierarchically ordered structures ranging from centimeter to micrometer spatial resolution. Additionally, increased extracellular calcium ion (Ca2+) levels can increase mitochondrial motility, which is necessary for the regulation of Wallerian degeneration and thus accelerate nerve repair. Ca2+ has been implicated as a key messenger in the guidance of developing axons. The concentration of extracellular Ca2+ can mediate the axonal growth cone and its turning behavior. A local, controlled accumulation of released Ca2+ has been shown beneficial for long-term peripheral nerve regeneration. The incorporation of ice-templating and 3D printing technology was implemented to fabricate personalized scaffolds for nerve repair, which can effectively guide the extension of neurites at the single-cell level. The channel sizes of the scaffolds could be easily tuned via annealing in the presence of removable molecules, which addresses the demands for anisotropic scaffolds with precisely tunable porosity. Compared with reported scaffolds and methods, the scaffolds fabricated during this project show high spatial resolution and designed geometry that mimic the complex constructures of native nerve tissues. Furthermore, I developed a NIR-responsive drug loading system based on gelatin/polypyrrole (GB@PPy) nanoparticles for controllable Ca2+ release. Under NIR irradiation, integrated GB@PPy was able to efficiently release Ca2+ to accelerate the growth of neurons.

Текст от CORDIS, на английски · Данни: CORDIS, © Европейски съюз