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An Enhanced Nerve Conduit Combined With Exercise To Improve Functional Recovery After Peripheral Nerve Injury, Tonya Jo Whitehead
An Enhanced Nerve Conduit Combined With Exercise To Improve Functional Recovery After Peripheral Nerve Injury, Tonya Jo Whitehead
Wayne State University Dissertations
Peripheral nerve injuries affect millions of people each year around the world. Current treatments include an autograft, the gold standard, and commercially available nerve growth conduits (NGC). Autografts have several drawbacks including donor site morbidity and nerve size mismatch, which leads to incomplete recovery. Commercial NGCs can help with recovery but do not contain any specific cues to guide nerve regeneration. This thesis first evaluated mechanical, topographical and chemical cues that can be included in a NGC to promote and direct nerve regeneration. To incorporate all of the cues, a compliant substrate methacrylated hyaluronic acid (MeHA, mechanical cue) is electrospun …
Biomaterials Approaches For Utilizing The Regenerative Potential Of The Peripheral Nerve Injury Microenvironment, Melissa Renee Wrobel
Biomaterials Approaches For Utilizing The Regenerative Potential Of The Peripheral Nerve Injury Microenvironment, Melissa Renee Wrobel
Wayne State University Dissertations
Clinically available treatments are insufficient to achieve full functional recovery in large (>3cm) peripheral nerve injuries (PNI). The objectives in this thesis were 1) to study often overlooked elements of intrinsic PNI repair including release of inhibitory CSPGs and post-injury responses of inflammatory macrophages and dedifferentiated Schwann cells; 2) to create biomaterial scaf-folds featuring topographical and adhesive cues to enhance neurite outgrowth; and 3) to test the ability of those cues to direct macrophages and Schwann cells towards a pro-regenerative phe-notype. It is hypothesized that recapitulating the positive and negative cues of the PNI microenvi-ronment can better improve regeneration. …