Materials for peripheral nerve repair constructs: Natural proteins or synthetic polymers?

PVDF and P(VDF-TrFE) Electrospun Scaffolds for Nerve Graft Engineering: A Comparative Study on Piezoelectric and Structural Properties, and In Vitro Biocompatibility

“…After three days in culture, the nrSCs were evenly distributed over the Poly-L-Lysine-coated (PLL)-coated control surfaces and the PCL, PVDF, and P(VDF-TrFE) scaffolds. Coating with PLL is a standard procedure for allowing optimal attachment and growth of nrSCs in culture [ 49 ]. Figure 6 shows the representative images of the immunofluorescence staining of nrSCs on days 3 ( Figure 6 A–D) and 6 ( Figure 6 E–H) in culture.…”

“…Biosynthetic nerve conduits can be considered as potential candidates to replace the gold standard, the autologous nerve grafts, to repair PNIs. Although a variety of materials and their regeneration enhancing properties are known, developing a conduit possessing optimal characteristics is still a vivid field [ 49 , 50 ]. While the application of PCL, an FDA approved polymer, has shown great promise in rat sciatic nerve injury models for peripheral nerve regeneration [ 14 , 50 , 51 ], the results of our own in vivo study revealed that the application of our electrospun PCL scaffolds induced massive foreign body response and thus impaired the axonal regeneration after 13 weeks post-transplantation into sciatic nerve gaps of Wistar rats [ 15 ].…”

‘EngNT’ — Engineering live neural tissue for nerve replacement

“…At some point there may be a synthetic hydrogel that outperforms the current collagen option for EngNT, but that opportunity has not yet emerged despite synthetic polymers being widely researched for nerve repair [ 12 , 13 , 34 ]. The disadvantages of using an animal-derived protein biomaterial are outweighed somewhat in EngNT since collagen forms the bulk extracellular matrix of natural nerve tissue, therefore EngNT integrates without the challenges of degradation products and mechanical mismatch associated with other biomaterials.…”

Natural Biomaterials as Instructive Engineered Microenvironments That Direct Cellular Function in Peripheral Nerve Tissue Engineering

“…There is little consensus in peripheral nerve engineering, despite the wide range of biomaterials available, on which are most suited to supporting cells involved in the repair process such as neurons, Schwann cells, macrophages, and blood vessels. As is the case for many tissue engineering solutions, both natural and synthetic material avenues have been extensively explored with tangible advantages and disadvantages attributed to both options ( Zhang et al, 2014 ; Di Summa et al, 2015 ; Muheremu and Ao, 2015 ; Gregory and Phillips, 2021 ). Synthetic polymers are popular as they can be adapted, through various modifications, to improve cell adhesion and finely tune mechanical properties ( Li et al, 2015 ; Mobasseri et al, 2015 ; Shahriari et al, 2017 ).…”