Co-Culturing Human Adipose Derived Stem Cells and Schwann Cells on Spider Silk—A New Approach as Prerequisite for Enhanced Nerve Regeneration

Abstract

Fast recovery is crucial for a successful nerve repair and an optimal functional outcome after peripheral nerve injury. Regarding donor site morbidity, autologous transplantation shows great limitations, which urge the need for alternative options in nerve reconstruction. Spider silk was reported as an advantageous material for cell adhesion, migration and proliferation, and its use in conduits is of great interest, especially in combination with cells to improve nerve regeneration. We here described the behavior of a co-culture of human Schwann cells and human adipose-derived stem cells (ADSCs) on spider silk as a new approach. After characterized by immunostaining ADSCs and Schwann cells were seeded in the co-culture on a spider silk scaffold and observed for 21 days. Results showed that cells were attached to the silk and aligned along the silk fibers. With further culture time, cells migrated along the silk and increased in number and formed an almost confluent cell layer. In immunostaining, results suggest that the cell layer was equally composed of ADSCs and Schwann cells. In conclusion, we showed that by providing a guiding structure for directed growth and cells to support nerve regeneration and remyelination, a valid alternative to autologous nerve grafts could have been found.

Fundamentals and Current Strategies for Peripheral Nerve Repair and Regeneration

“…5 shows some promising results obtained with natural-origin biomaterials, in particular using silk fibroin, chitosan and alginate polymers. The significant works considering the use of natural-origin biomaterials in PNR are summarized in Table 5 [118][119][120][121][122][123][124][125][126][127][128][129].…”

Adipose tissue stem cells in peripheral nerve regeneration—In vitro and in vivo

“…SCs and ASCs can be seeded on silk fibers, which is another promising scaffold in peripheral nerve regeneration (Resch et al., 2018). Rat SCs cocultured with ASCs are seeded on a silk fibroin/collagen scaffold to construct a tissue‐engineered nerve scaffold for bridging a 10 mm gap in the rat sciatic nerve.…”

Mesenchymal Stem Cell Treatment Perspectives in Peripheral Nerve Regeneration: Systematic Review

“…Four studies [ 19 , 20 , 24 , 31 ] dealt with differentiation modalities of MSCs into Schwann-like cells, and another one [ 34 ] analyzed the mechanism of MSC differentiation towards astrocytes.…”

“…To date, autologous nerve grafting is still the method of choice for bridging peripheral nerve gaps [ 15 , 19 ], but promising results have been derived from other options deepened by the studies reviewed in this paper (see Table 3 ).…”