Journal of Biomimetics Biomaterials and Tissue Engineering
Open Access

Review Article

Biomimetic Single and Multi-Lumen Bilayer Design of Electroconductive Nerve Grafts for Neuroengineering

Cameron H Menzies¹, Antonio Lauto², Lloyd Mirto², Ben Van Gogh¹, Andrew Ruys¹, Sri Bandyopadhyay³, Paul Carter⁴ and Philip Boughton^1*

¹Biomedical Engineering, AMME School, The University of Sydney, Sydney, Australia

²Medical Science SoSH, University of Western Sydney, Sydney, Australia

³School of Materials Science & Engineering, University of New South Wales, Sydney, Australia

⁴Cochlear Pty Ltd, Sydney Australia

Corresponding Author:

Cameron H Menzies
The University of Sydney, Australia
E-mail: cmen7987@uni.sydney.edu.au

Received date June 03, 2013; Accepted date July 14, 2013; Published date July 20, 2013

Citation: Menzies CH, Boughton P, Lauto A, Mirto L, Bandyopadhyay S (2013) Biomimetic Single and Multi-Lumen Bilayer Design of Electroconductive Nerve Grafts for Neuroengineering. J Biomim Biomater Tissue Eng 18:105. doi: 10.4172/1662-100X.1000105

Copyright: © 2013 Menzies CH, et al. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.

A versatile nerve graft was developed for use in peripheral nerve regeneration. Existing techniques such as autography require additional surgery, while current synthetic nerve grafts are only capable of facilitating neuroregeneration across small lesions (<5 mm). Electroconductive polymers, hydrogel and composite systems were reviewed, to help develop a biomaterials basis for the design. A novel configuration for an electroconductive nerve scaffold has been proposed, incorporating an insulated multi-lumen design for re-connecting larger nerve gaps. A single open-lumen conduit and a more advanced multi-channel design with insulating sheaths were fabricated in order to mimic the fascicular architecture seen in peripheral nerves. The scaffold employed a synthetic biomaterial composite of polycaprolactone matrix filled with functionalised Multiwalled Carbon Nanotubes (f-MWCNTs). The composite suspension was electrospun under the influence of 5kV electric field. 80mm single and multi-lumen scaffolds were formed that were then capable of being securely sutured to kangaroo tail spinal cord without tearing. The scaffolds were tension tested and found to have a Young’s Modulus of 15.7 MPa ± 2.98 (p=0.95), and a tensile strength of 1.172 MPa ± 0.16 (p=0.95) and 1.375 MPa ± 0.08 (p=0.95) for the single and multi-channel grafts respectively. A preliminary neurotoxicity study using N2A cell-line showed strong cell-scaffold adhesion and viability.

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