Development of poly (L-lactide-co-caprolactone) multichannel nerve conduit with aligned electrospun nanofibers for Schwann cell proliferation

Biomaterials are playing a significant role in understanding and promoting the plasticity and repair of the nervous system. Biomimetic nanofibrous scaffolds mimicking important features of the native extracellular matrix provide a promising strategy to restore functions or achieve favorable responses for tissue regeneration and autograft nerve conduit is one of the most promising nerve regeneration strategies. The present study is based on novel fabrication method by using a special collector for 3D multichannel nerve conduit, longitudinally oriented with aligned electrospun nanofibers. The conduit contained a high number of channels (varying from 7 to 19) and each channel showed a separate morphology. Nerve channels were fabricated with the varying length ranging from 4 to 9cm and total diameter ranging from 2200 +/- 40 mu m to 3951 +/- 196 mu m, while the channel diameter ranging from 350 +/- 86 mu m to 780 +/- 20 mu m. It has been clearly shown that the average porosity of nerve conduits has reached almost 89%. In this study, we optimized the parameters to control the structural stability, including the size and the number of channels in the nerve conduit. We also checked in vitro cell biocompatibility of multichannel nerve conduit and demonstrated that Schwann cells have the tendency to grow along the direction of nanofibers and high cell growth was observed in high number of channels compared to low number of channels. These results elaborated the potential use of this biocompatible multichannel nerve conduit for further in vivo testing. [GRAPHICS] .