BIOHYBRID - Biohybrid templates for peripheral nerve regeneration.

Dear Editor, Peripheral nerve injuries represent a major cause for morbidity and disability in affected patients and cause substantial costs for society in a global perspective. It has been estimated that peripheral nerve injuries affect 2.8% of trauma patients, many of whom acquire lifelong disability (Noble et al., 1998). With respect to an incidence of nerve injuries of 13.9/100,000 inhabitants per year (Asplund et al., 2009) and the number of inhabitants in the EU (495,000,000 inhabitants in 2007), the number of peripheral nerve injuries requiring repair and reconstruction, excluding nerve injuries by amputations, may be 70,000 annually only in EU countries. Related to peripheral nerve injuries, the costs for society are substantial and consist of direct (costs for surgery, outpatient visits and rehabilitation) and indirect (lost production) costs. Individual median and ulnar nerve injuries in the forearm have total costs of EUR 51,000 and 31,000, respectively, where around 85% of the costs consist of loss of production (Rosberg et al., 2005), still excluding costs for adjusted quality of life (Eriksson et al., 2011). Thus, one may estimate that the annual costs only in the EU may be as high as EUR 2.2 billion, indicating that improved treatment strategies for peripheral nerve injuries may not only improve the situation for patients, but may also significantly reduce costs for society. Based on these premises, the EU granted a 6,000,000 Euro fund as part of the seventh Framework Program to the BIOHYBRID consortium that was built with the overall aim to develop, in a pre-clinical perspective , an innovative biohybrid artificial nerve device for improving the regenerative treatment of severe traumatic injuries of peripheral nerves. BIOHYBRID is a 4-year collaborative project that AQ1 Portugal, Spain and Sweden) and1 Associate Country (Israel) (Fig. 1). The Consortium, coordinated by Claudia Grothe from Hannover Medical School and supported by a coordination board composed of Ste-fano Geuna from Turin University, Thomas Freier from Medovent GmbH, and Kirsten Haastert-Talini also from Hannover Medical School, includes three active and well-integrated SMEs as well as seven academic part-AQ2 ners covering all the scientific areas of interest for this project. The work program includes an integrated experimental approach bringing together the main aspects of regenerative medicine: (1) reconstructive microsurgery, (2) regenerative scaffolds, and (3) cell transplantation. This approach aims at the biological pre-fabrication of biohybrid nerve devices, their grafting into nerve gaps in various animal models, and the comprehensive evaluation of …