Multichannel, biomimetic scaffolds improve functional connectivity following traumatic long-gap peripheral nerve injury

The gold standard for repair of peripheral nerve injuries is a nerve autograft. Donor nerve harvest creates a second surgical site, invariable numbness and donor site chronic neuropathic pain in 20% of cases. We developed a poly-caprolactone (PCL) multichannel, biomimetic scaffold with surface features promoting cell and vascular attachment and rapid, linear axonal regeneration.

The cross-sectional area available for axonal regeneration exceeds that of autografts. When compared to nerve autografts and FDA-approved nerve conduits in 1cm-long rat and 3cm-long rabbit sciatic gap injury, biomimetic scaffolds were equivalent or superior to nerve autografts on measures of axonal regeneration, re-connection between gastrocnemius muscle and spinal cord motor neurons, and evoked motor responses. Scaffolds were superior in all measures to open tube conduits.

Biomimetic multichannel scaffolds have potential to replace the need for autografting for peripheral nerve gap repair and are now undergoing multicenter clinical trials. Supported by the Veterans Administration and the NIH. Department of Neuroscience, University of California San Diego, La Jolla, CA, USA Jacob Koffler, Eleni Sinopoulou, Isac Lazarovits, Deborah M.

Alexander, Alec Salcido & Mark H. Tuszynski Veterans Affairs Medical Center, San Diego, CA, USA Jacob Koffler, Eleni Sinopoulou, Deborah M. Tuszynski Department of Radiology & Institute for Quantitative Health Science & Engineering, Michigan State University, East Lansing, MI, USA Department of Orthopedics, University of California San Diego, La Jolla, CA, USA Materials Department, University of California Santa Barbara, Santa Barbara, CA, USA J.K., I.L., J.S. and M.H.T. are scientific founders and shareholders in Auxilium Therapeutics, which has licensed intellectual property related to this work.

Data from this work was included in a patent application by The Regents of The University of California and The Regents of The University of Michigan. Publisher’s note Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made.

The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.