Strategies for regeneration of components of nervous system: scaffolds, cells and biomolecules

Abstract

Nerve diseases including acute injury such as peripheral nerve injury (PNI), spinal cord injury (SCI) and traumatic brain injury (TBI), and chronic disease like neurodegeneration disease can cause various function disorders of nervous system, such as those relating to memory and voluntary movement. These nerve diseases produce great burden for individual families and the society, for which a lot of efforts have been made. Axonal pathways represent a unidirectional and aligned architecture allowing systematic axonal development within the tissue. Following a traumatic injury, the intricate architecture suffers disruption leading to inhibition of growth and loss of guidance. Due to limited capacity of the body to regenerate axonal pathways, it is desirable to have biomimetic approach that has the capacity to graft a bridge across the lesion while providing optimal mechanical and biochemical cues for tissue regeneration. And for central nervous system injury, one more extra precondition is compulsory: creating a less inhibitory surrounding for axonal growth. Electrospinning is a cost-effective and straightforward technique to fabricate extracellular matrix (ECM)-like nanofibrous structures, with various fibrous forms such as random fibers, aligned fibers, 3D fibrous scaffold and core-shell fibers from a variety of polymers. The diversity and versatility of electrospinning technique, together with functionalizing cues such as neurotrophins, ECM-based proteins and conductive polymers, have gained considerable success for the nerve tissue applications. We are convinced that in the future the stem cell therapy with the support of functionalized electrospun nerve scaffolds could be a promising therapy to cure nerve diseases.

Biomaterials for Enhancing Neuronal Repair

“…While the integration of chemical cues into materials has been widely employed in other neuronal studies (Moore et al, 2006;Patel et al, 2007;Millet et al, 2010), the influence of chemical signals is intertwined in the discussion of the aforementioned parameters. This review focuses on neurons, while discussion of neural repair of all major cell populations within the nervous system, including glia, has been considered elsewhere (Schmidt and Leach, 2003;Tian et al, 2015).…”

Integration of the Neural Stem and Progenitor Cells into Existing Neuronal Circuitry and Adult Neurogenesis in the Dentate Gyrus of the Hippocampus

“…Also Schwann cells supply the nutrient materials, guidethe axon to the distal segment and remyelinate regenerating axons [26][27][28]. Meanwhile the regenerative process in the CNSis very difficult because of the multiple factors including inhibitory factors which are produced by neighbor cells and undesirable microenvironment [29]. Therefore restoration of the damaged CNS is a major challenge.…”

Production and in vitro evaluation of macroporous, cell-encapsulating alginate fibres for nerve repair

“…(PCL), poly (L-lactic acid) (PLLA) and poly (lactic co-glycolic acid) (PLGA) [5,6] have been investigated extensively for production of nerve substitutes. Aligned, electrospun PCL fibres, for example, have been reported to encourage neurite outgrowth from rat pheochromocytoma PC12 cells in an oriented fashion compared with random fibres [6].…”