Novel Nerve Healing Technology Achieved Via Improved “Guidance Conduits”

Ever get yourself in a pretty nasty injury, have it heal, and find out that it doesn’t “feel” as it did before? You don’t seem to be alone, as it’s well-known that major injuries can often heal, but the nerves that come with them often struggle to heal back to pristine condition. This means that patients that recover sometimes come attached with reduced mobility or sensory problems.

This is where researchers from the Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland (RCSI) come in; they managed to find out, through mice tests, that loading proteins from the extracellular matrix (ECM) into nerve guidance conduit (NGC) implants can improve nerve repair, giving patients a chance at nerve recovery after serious injuries. Their novel methodology was published in the journal Matrix Biology.

The ECM is an organized network of body macromolecules that “link” together to contribute to the mechanical properties of body tissues, according to a paper from Dr. Beatrice Yue published in the Journal of Glaucoma.

The thinking goes that by obtaining a mix of proteins from the ECM and implanting it onto NGCs, the NGCs themselves gain properties that boost the quality of healing that they do while they direct nerves along specific paths to allow for better nerve regeneration. This allows the NGC implants to “mimic the body’s nerve repair processes,” according to a press release by the RCSI.

The breakthrough study was led by principal investigator Prof. Fergal O’Brien and assisted by lead authors Dr. Alan Hibbitts and Dr. Zuzana Kočí, from the RCSI’s Tissue Engineering Research Group, Department of Anatomy and Regenerative Medicine and Science Foundation Ireland’s (SFI’s) Research Centre for Advanced Materials and Bioengineering Research (AMBER). The three were assisted by a team of researchers.

Said Drs. Hibbitts and Kočí in the RCSI press release: “In our lab-based trials, we discovered that at eight weeks [post-implantation] our nerve guidance conduit had successfully improved the prognosis for nerve regeneration and repair over the current clinical gold standard. Our conduit supported clear improvements in nerve repair and blood vessel formation and most importantly, we saw that we could scale this up to approach very large nerve defects in our pre-clinical studies.”

Prof. O’Brien added: “[The] research had a clear focus – to create a device based on scientific excellence with improved outcomes that would translate well through regulatory assessment, into the clinical setting, and ultimately, patients. This provides a more direct route to market and therefore the potential for faster real-world impact in improving patient quality of life.”

Researchers are now hard at work improving their technology to someday allow for human trials.

(For more medical news, check out implanted computers that go “on the bone”; after that, read about novel brain implants that allow previously blind persons to gain some of their vision again.)

References

• Hibbitts, A. J., Kočí, Z., Kneafsey, S., Matsiko, A., Žilić, L., Dervan, A., Hinton, P., Chen, G., Cavanagh, B., Dowling, J., McCoy, C., Buckley, C. T., Archibald, S. J., & O’Brien, F. J. (2022). Multi-factorial nerve guidance conduit engineering improves outcomes in inflammation, angiogenesis and large defect nerve repair. Matrix Biology. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.matbio.2022.01.002
• Irish researchers unlock breakthrough approach to repair peripheral nerve damage. (2022, January 17). RCSI University of Medicine and Health Sciences. https://www.rcsi.com/dublin/news-and-events/news/news-article/2022/01/irish-researchers-unlock-breakthrough-approach-to-repair-peripheral-nerve-damage
• Irving, M. (2022, January 18). Cellular support network boosts the regeneration of injured nerves. New Atlas. https://newatlas.com/medical/nerve-regeneration-extracellular-matrix/
• Yue, B. (2014). Biology of the extracellular matrix: An overview. Journal of Glaucoma, S20–S23. https://doi.org/10.1097/IJG.0000000000000108