PREPARATION AND CHARACTERIZATION OF ARTIFICIAL NERVE GUIDANCE CONDUITS BASED ON POLYCAPROLACTONE/POLYANILINE/COLLAGEN TYPE I COMPOSITE NANOFIBERS USING RAT SCIATIC NERVE INJURY MODEL
Peripheral nerve injuries (PNls) occur very frequently in clinical practice, and cause life-long disability in some patients. The current gold standard in the treatment of PNlswith long nerve gaps is autologous nerve grafting, which, although is effective in supporting nerve regeneration, unfortunately, has associated drawbacks such as. donor site morbidity, inadequate supply of donor nerves, and mismatch between donor nerve and recipient nerve. Such drawbacks seen with autografts are overcome by the use of artificial nerve guidance conduits (NGCs), which have become an attractive alternative to autografts. However, to date, although a wide variety of materials have been used as NGCs by many research groups, no single material has yet been proven to yield results that are at least comparable to those of autografts. In this study, the objective was to prepare and characterize polycaprolactone/polyaniline/collagen type I (PCl/PANi/Col) composite nanofibers for use as artificial NGC, and to evaluate its nerve regenerating capacity in rat sciatic nerve injury model. A set of optimal conditions were found in this study for the preparation of the PCl/PANi/Col composite nanofiber-based artificial NGC. This composite material was demonstrated by four-point probe conductivity testing to have a conductivity of 1.2146 x 10~6 Scrn (2.65 pcnt RSD n = 5), and was demonstrated by thermogravimetric analysis to have a thermal stability that is maintained up to 300oC. Scanning electron micrographs of these composites demonstrated their nanofibrous structures, with diameters ranging from 27 nm to 110 nm. Nerve functional recovery assessment by motor sciatic function index (SFI) scoring revealed that at 8 weeks post-op, the mean SFI score of the test group was significantly higher than that of the negative control group (P =0.05), and that at 8 weeks and 9 weeks post-op, the mean SFI scores of the test group were significantly higher than those of the positive control group (P = 0.05).
