A 3D‐Printed Self‐Adhesive Bandage with Drug Release for Peripheral Nerve Repair

Abstract

Peripheral nerve injury is a common disease that often causes disability and challenges surgeons. Drug-releasable biomaterials provide a reliable tool to regulate the nerve healing-associated microenvironment for nerve repair. Here, a self-adhesive bandage is designed that can form a wrap surrounding the injured nerve to promote nerve regeneration and recovery. Via a 3D printing technique, the bandage is prepared with a special structure and made up of two different hydrogel layers that can adhere to each other by a click reaction. The nanodrug is encapsulated in one layer with a grating structure. Wrapping the injured nerve, the grating layer of the bandage is closed to the injured site. The drug can be mainly released to the inner area of the wrap to promote the nerve repair by improving the proliferation and migration of Schwann cells. In this study, the bandage is used to assist the neurorrhaphy for the treatment of complete sciatic nerve transection without obvious defect in rats. Results indicate that the self-adhesive capacity can simplify the installation process and the drug-loaded bandage can promote the repairing of injured nerves. The demonstrated 3D-printed self-adhesive bandage has potential application in assisting the neurorrhaphy for nerve repair.

Connected healthcare: Improving patient care using digital health technologies

“…Although the American Society for Testing and Materials (ASTM) classifies seven main categories of 3D printing technologies [87], five main technologies have been researched within pharmaceuticals (e.g., binder jet printing [88,89,131,132]; fused deposition modelling, FDM [92,93,[133][134][135]; semi-solid extrusion, SSE [96,97,[136][137][138][139]; selective laser sintering (SLS) [99][100][101][102][103][104]; and vat photopolymerization [109,115,[140][141][142][143]). More recently, there has been a considerable interest in a sixth technology, termed direct powder extrusion (DPE) or melt extrusion deposition (MED™), which reduces risks of thermal drug degradation by simplifying the extrusion procedure into a single-step process [105][106][107]144].…”

3D Printed Personalized Nerve Guide Conduits for Precision Repair of Peripheral Nerve Defects

“…The experimental results showed that the bandage can promote the repair of injured nerves, indicating its potential application in nerve regeneration. [ 57 ] Overall, the single lumen linear hollow conduits are the initial design version of NGCs. [ 58 ] Although hollow NGCs cannot fully meet clinical requirements, they are more clinically acceptable than other types of NGCs.…”

3D printing of functional nerve guide conduits

“…3D printing technology is a convenient method that can be used to fabricate different morphological NGCs that could influence neural cell proliferation and migration. Additionally, the microstructures of NGCs can also affect the controlled and sustained release of growth factors and drugs to offer specific cues to the regenerating tissues [ 121 ]. Integrating cells, growth factors and drugs into biomaterials to prepare functional NGCs may be a potential strategy to build a more ideal microenvironment for functional recovery of injured nerves.…”