Collagen/silk fibroin nerve conduits used for repairing peripheral nerve defect:application and development / 中国组织工程研究

ABSTRACT

BACKGROUND:Peripheral nerve defect due to limb dysfunction has always been the difficulty faced by the medical profession. Ideal materials and processing technology for constructing a tissue engineering scaffold targeting peripheral nerve repair are stil in research stage. OBJECTIVE:To review the research progress in peripheral nerve repair using col agen/silk fibroin nerve conduits. METHODS:In this paper, the first author retrieved the PubMed and CNKI from 2003 to 2016 to search articles regarding methods of constructing artificial nerve scaffolds and selection of raw materials. Data from these articles were col ected, summarized and analyzed. RESULTS AND CONCLUSION:Forty-six articles were included for final analysis. Col agen and its degradation products trigger no inflammatory response in the host because of high biocompatibility and biodegradability. However, its use is largely limited by its rapid degradation and poor physical performance. Silk fibroin has a high flexibility and biocompatibility, and exhibits a slow degradation in vivo. As a rapid prototyping technique, three-dimensional printing can print various forms of scaffolds within a short time, characterized as high-quality pore structure and large-scale production. Given these, the col agen/silk fibroin nerve conduit prepared using the three-dimensional printing technology can maintain the biocompatibility and even improve the mechanical properties of the raw materials. Until now, more investigations on nerve repair using col agen or silk fibroin have been done, and we have never stopped improving the production process of these scaffolds. Therefore, the col agen/silk fibroin scaffold prepared using the three-dimensional printing technology is expected to become the main candidate for the repair of peripheral nerve defects.