Strategies for Effective Neural Circuit Reconstruction After Spinal Cord Injury: Use of Stem Cells and Biomaterials.

Spinal cord injury (SCI) is a serious disease of the central nervous system, often with irreversible loss of motor or sensory functions. Failure of axon connection and inhibition of the microenvironment after SCI severely hinder the regeneration of damaged tissue and neuron function. Therefore, a new perspective in the treatment of SCI is reconstruction of the neural circuit. Stem cells are a type of cells with differentiation potential. They reconstruct local circulation by differentiating into neurons to replace damaged cells. They also can secrete various factors to regulate the host microenvironment and play a therapeutic role. Biomaterials can fill the cavity at the site of SCI, load therapeutic drugs, provide adsorption sites for transplanted cells, and play a bridging role. In this review, the therapeutic role of stem cells and biomaterials is discussed, together with their properties, advantages, limitations, and future perspectives, providing a reference for basic and clinical research on SCI treatment.

Fast Switchable Dual-Model Grating by Using Polymer-Stabilized Sphere Phase Liquid Crystal.

We demonstrated a fast switchable dual-model grating based on a polymer-stabilized sphere phase liquid crystal. To form binary periodicity layers, the polymer-stabilized sphere phase liquid crystal precursor was sequence ultraviolet cured at an isotropic and sphere phase. This grating jointly modulated both the phase and the amplitude, had six times the diffraction efficiency of that fabricated with polymer-stabilized blue phase liquid crystal. Moreover, the dual-model tunable grating shown polarization-independent and submillisecond response time, which may hold a great potential application in diffractive optics.