Preparation And Characterization Of Polycaprolactone Nerve Guidance Conduit With Multiple Channels

Peripheral nerve injury is a common clinical condition,and its repair and regeneration is a hot research topic in the field of neuroscience.When the distance of injury is short,the peripheral nerve can repair itself,but for long-distance defects,repair must be accomplished with the help of nerve grafts.The current main treatment methods are suture surgery,autologous or allogeneic grafts,and artificial nerve conduit bridging.Suture surgery is only indicated for short distance(<5 mm)nerve injuries and has the disadvantage of misaligned nerve bundles and tissue hyperplasia due to curling of the nerve section.Allografts suffer from immune rejection.Therefore,it is the goal of researchers to find suitable artificial nerve grafts to guide and promote peripheral nerve regeneration and accelerate functional reconstruction.Initially,the biomaterial was designed as a simple cylindrical tubular hollow structure,but the small specific surface area of the wall of this artificial nerve conduit is not conducive to the adhesion and proliferation of Schwann cells;in addition,the mechanical properties of the hollow type nerve conduit are insufficient in long segment peripheral nerve injury repair,and it tends to collapse in blocks during degradation,creating compression on the regenerating nerve,so researchers introduced multiple intra-canalicular channels to construct multichannel nerve conduits,which are designed to mimic the structure of nerve bundles.Therefore,in this paper,a multichannel nerve conduit with a diameter of less than 3 mm and a length of more than 2 cm containing 20 internal channels was prepared for the repair of long-distance nerve injuries using polycaprolactone(PCL)as the material.Multi-channel nerve conduit preparation technology research: In this paper,PCL solutions of different components were injected into the designed templates by injection molding method and then combined with freeze-drying method to obtain multichannel neural catheters.The template used was constructed from inexpensive cubic iron frame,rubber bands,water-soluble vinyls yarns and plastic hollow.Multi-channel nerve conduit in vitro performance test: The ideal artificial nerve graft must have mechanical properties matching the implanted tissue and good biocompatibility.Therefore,in this paper,an in vitro experimental study on the prepared multichannel nerve conduit was conducted,mainly including physicochemical property characterization and in vitro cytocompatibility assay.