Development and Biocompatibility evaluation of silk fibroin-based nerve grafts for peripheral nerve regeneration
会议名称：《第七届亚太地区医学与生物学工程学术年会》
会议日期：2008年
学科分类：1002[医学-临床医学] 100210[医学-外科学(含：普外、骨外、泌尿外、胸心外、神外、整形、烧伤、野战外)] 08[工学] 080501[工学-材料物理与化学] 0805[工学-材料科学与工程（可授工学、理学学位）] 080502[工学-材料学] 10[医学]
基 金：the Hi-Tech Research and De-velopment Program of China (863 Program, Grant no. 2006AA02A128) the Nature Science Foundation of china (Grant no. 30770585) Basic Research Program of Jiangsu Education Department (Grant no. 07KJA31025) Pro-gram for New Century Excellent Talents in University are gratefully acknowledged (Grant no. NCET-07-0466)
关 键 词：Silk fibroin Schwann cell Biocompatibility Nerve conduit Nerve regernation
摘 要：Silk fibroin （SF） have been used in the field of bone or ligament tissue engineering. We developed a novel biomimetic design of the SF-based nerve graft （SF graft） which was composed of a SF-nerve guidance conduit （NGC）. The SF-NGC prepared via well-established procedures exhibits an eggshell-like microstructure that is responsible for its superior mechanical and permeable properties beneficial to nerve re-generation. The inner wall displays a 100-μm-thick netted structure formed by SF fibers of 10 μm diameter, which were spread out as a stiffener. The data also indicate that the cumu-lative release of vitamin B12 is almost 100% after 75 min of *** assay was performed to determine the in vitro cytotoxicity of the SF-NGC extract fluid on the cultured L929 cells derived from an immortalized mouse fibroblast cell line. The adult rat was subjected to implantation of the SF graft for bridging a 10-mm long sciatic nerve defect. Then the follow-ing-up experiments at initial stage （1- 4 weeks） of nerve regen-eration including routine blood tests and histochemical investi-gation were used to evaluate the in vivo biocompatibility of the SF graft with peripheral nerve. The results suggested the non-cytotoxicity of the SF-NGC with grade 0 as per the U.S. Phar-macopeia guidelines. The outcome of peripheral nerve repair at six months post-implantation was evaluated by a combina-tion of electrophysiological assessment, FluoroGold retrograde tracing and histological investigation. The examined functional and morphological parameters show that SF grafts could pro-mote peripheral nerve regeneration. Collectively, these data indicate that SF graft raised a potential possibility of using these newly developed nerve grafts as a promising alternative to nerve autografts.