Deans' stroke musings: 3D multi-channel bi-functionalized silk electrospun conduits for peripheral nerve regeneration

Changing stroke rehab and research worldwide now.Time is Brain! trillions and trillions of neurons that DIE each day because there are NO effective hyperacute therapies besides tPA(only 12% effective). I have 523 posts on hyperacute therapy, enough for researchers to spend decades proving them out. These are my personal ideas and blog on stroke rehabilitation and stroke research. Do not attempt any of these without checking with your medical provider. Unless you join me in agitating, when you need these therapies they won't be there.

What this blog is for:

My blog is not to help survivors recover, it is to have the 10 million yearly stroke survivors light fires underneath their doctors, stroke hospitals and stroke researchers to get stroke solved. 100% recovery. The stroke medical world is completely failing at that goal, they don't even have it as a goal. Shortly after getting out of the hospital and getting NO information on the process or protocols of stroke rehabilitation and recovery I started searching on the internet and found that no other survivor received useful information. This is an attempt to cover all stroke rehabilitation information that should be readily available to survivors so they can talk with informed knowledge to their medical staff. It lays out what needs to be done to get stroke survivors closer to 100% recovery. It's quite disgusting that this information is not available from every stroke association and doctors group.

Sunday, October 19, 2014

3D multi-channel bi-functionalized silk electrospun conduits for peripheral nerve regeneration

I don't see why your doctor isn't using something like this to reroute nerve signals around your dead brain areas. Or is your doctor a stick-in-the-mud? Hasn't read a research paper since medical school?
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1751616114003130

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DOI: 10.1016/j.jmbbm.2014.09.029

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Abstract

Despite technological advances over the past 25 years, a complete recovery from peripheral nerve injuries remains unsatisfactory today. The autograft is still considered the “gold standard” in clinical practice; however, postoperative complications and limited availability of nerve tissue has motivated the development of alternative approaches. Among them, the development of biomimetic nerve graft substitutes is one of the most promising strategies. In this study, multichanneled silk electrospun conduits bi-functionalized with Nerve Growth Factor (NGF) and Ciliary Neurotropic Factor (CNTF) were fabricated to enhance peripheral nerve regeneration. These bioactive guides consisting of longitudinally oriented channels and aligned nanofibers were designed in order to mimic the fascicular architecture and fibrous extracellular matrix found in native nerve. The simple use of the electrospinning technique followed by a manual manipulation to manufacture these conduits provides tailoring of channel number and diameter size to create perineurium-like structures. Functionalization of the silk fibroin nanofiber did not affect its secondary structure and chemical property. ELISA assays showed the absence of growth factors passive release from the functionalized fibers avoiding the topical accumulation of proteins. Additionally, our biomimetic multichanneled functionalized nerve guides displayed a mechanical behavior comparable to that of rat sciatic nerve with an ultimate peak stress of 4.0±0.6 MPa and a corresponding elongation at failure of 156.8±46.7%. Taken together, our results demonstrate for the first time our ability to design and characterize a bi-functionalized nerve conduit consisting of electrospun nanofibers with multichannel oriented and nanofibers aligned for peripheral regeneration. Our bioactive silk tubes thus represent a new and promising technique towards the creation of a biocompatible nerve guidance conduit.