The BioRobotics Institute, Department of Excellence in Robotics and AI, Scuola Superiore Sant'Anna, 56127 Pisa, Italy.
Translational Neuroengineering, Centre for Neuroprosthetics and Institute of Bioengineering, School of Engineering, École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL), 1007 Lausanne, Switzerland.
Biomolecules. 2023 Nov 27;13(12):1712. doi: 10.3390/biom13121712.
Nerve conduits may represent a valuable alternative to autograft for the regeneration of long-gap damages. However, no NCs have currently reached market approval for the regeneration of limiting gap lesions, which still represents the very bottleneck of this technology. In recent years, a strong effort has been made to envision an engineered graft to tackle this issue. In our recent work, we presented a novel design of porous/3D-printed chitosan/poly-ε-caprolactone conduits, coupling freeze drying and additive manufacturing technologies to yield conduits with good structural properties. In this work, we studied genipin crosslinking as strategy to improve the physiochemical properties of our conduit. Genipin is a natural molecule with very low toxicity that has been used to crosslink chitosan porous matrix by binding the primary amino group of chitosan chains. Our characterization evidenced a stabilizing effect of genipin crosslinking towards the chitosan matrix, with reported modified porosity and ameliorated mechanical properties. Given the reported results, this method has the potential to improve the performance of our conduits for the regeneration of long-gap nerve injuries.
神经导管可能是自体移植物修复长节段损伤的一种有价值的替代方法。然而，目前还没有神经导管获得限制间隙病变再生的市场批准，这仍然是该技术的一个非常大的瓶颈。近年来，人们为设计一种工程移植物来解决这个问题付出了巨大的努力。在我们最近的工作中，我们提出了一种新型多孔/3D 打印壳聚糖/聚己内酯导管的设计，结合了冷冻干燥和增材制造技术，以获得具有良好结构性能的导管。在这项工作中，我们研究了京尼平交联作为改善我们导管的物理化学性质的策略。京尼平是一种毒性非常低的天然分子，已被用于通过与壳聚糖链的伯氨基结合交联壳聚糖多孔基质。我们的特性分析表明，京尼平交联对壳聚糖基质有稳定作用，报道的改性孔隙率和机械性能得到改善。鉴于报道的结果，这种方法有可能提高我们的导管在长节段神经损伤修复中的性能。
