Tissue-engineered constructs for peripheral nerve repair: current research concepts and future perspectives

Traumatic injuries resulting in peripheral nerve lesions lead to important morbidity with devastating social and economic consequences. When the lesioned nerve cannot be sutured directly, a nerve graft is generally required to bridge the gap. Although autologous nerve grafting is still the first choice for reconstruction, it has the severe disadvantage of the sacrifice of a functional nerve. Research in tissue engineering and nerve regeneration may have a dramatic impact on clinical and surgical treatment of such nerve lesions. The authors review the latest concepts in tissue engineering for nerve repair, including scaffold engineering of neural guides, biomaterial modification, cell therapy, growth factors delivery, and electrical stimulation. Recent literature is reviewed in detail, pointing out the most interesting present achievements and perspectives for future clinical translation. Electronic search of the literature was performed using MEDLINE, Embase, and the Cochrane Library to identify research studies on peripheral nerve regeneration through tissue-engineered conduits. The following medical subject headings were used to carry out a systematic search of the literature: “nerve regeneration”, “stem cells”, “biomaterial”, “extracellular matrix”, “functional regeneration”, “growth factors” and “microchannels”. Included literature was published between 1991 and 2014. The reference lists from the retrieved articles were also reviewed for additional articles. In total, 76 articles were included in this study.