Sciatic nerve regeneration by transplantation of Schwann cells via erythropoietin controlled-releasing polylactic acid/multiwalled carbon nanotubes/gelatin nanofibrils neural guidance conduit

Majid Salehi, Mahdi Naseri-Nosar, Somayeh Ebrahimi-Barough, Mohammdreza Nourani, Arash Khojasteh, Amir Ali Hamidieh, Amir Amani, Saeed Farzamfar, Jafar Ai

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

75 Scopus citations

Abstract

The current study aimed to enhance the efficacy of peripheral nerve regeneration using an electrically conductive biodegradable porous neural guidance conduit for transplantation of allogeneic Schwann cells (SCs). The conduit was produced from polylactic acid (PLA), multiwalled carbon nanotubes (MWCNTs), and gelatin nanofibrils (GNFs) coated with the recombinant human erythropoietin-loaded chitosan nanoparticles (rhEpo-CNPs). The PLA/MWCNTs/GNFs/rhEpo-CNPs conduit had the porosity of 85.78 ± 0.70%, the contact angle of 77.65 ± 1.91° and the ultimate tensile strength and compressive modulus of 5.51 ± 0.13 MPa and 2.66 ± 0.34 MPa, respectively. The conduit showed the electrical conductivity of 0.32 S cm −1 and lost about 11% of its weight after 60 days in normal saline. The produced conduit was able to release the rhEpo for at least 2 weeks and exhibited favorable cytocompatibility towards SCs. For functional analysis, the conduit was seeded with 1.5 × 10 4 SCs and implanted into a 10 mm sciatic nerve defect of Wistar rat. After 14 weeks, the results of sciatic functional index, hot plate latency, compound muscle action potential amplitude, weight-loss percentage of wet gastrocnemius muscle and Histopathological examination using hematoxylin-eosin and Luxol fast blue staining demonstrated that the produced conduit had comparable nerve regeneration to the autograft, as the gold standard to bridge the nerve gaps.

Original languageEnglish (US)
Pages (from-to)1463-1476
Number of pages14
JournalJournal of Biomedical Materials Research - Part B Applied Biomaterials
Volume106
Issue number4
DOIs
StatePublished - May 2018
Externally publishedYes

Bibliographical note

Publisher Copyright:
© 2017 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

Keywords

  • chitosan nanoparticles
  • erythropoietin
  • multi-walled carbon nanotubes
  • neural guidance conduit
  • polylactic acid
  • Schwann cells

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