Peripheral nerve injury can significantly affect the daily life of individuals with impaired nerve function and permanent nerve deformity. One of the most common treatments is autograft transplantation. Tissue engineering is one of the efficient methods to regenerate injured nerves using scaffolds, cells, and growth factors. Conduits, which are produced by a variety of techniques, could be used as an alternative treatment for patients with damaged nerves. The electrospinning technique is one of the most important and widely used methods for generating nanofiber conduits from biocompatible polymers. In this study, using the electrospinning method, three different conduits, including polyurethane (PU), polyurethane/collagen (PU/C), and a new conduit based on polyurethane + collagen + nanobioglass (PU/C/NBG), were prepared. The characteristics of these three types of conduits were evaluated by SEM, XRD, and various experiments, including porosity, degradation, contact angle, DMTA, FTIR, MTT, and DAPI staining. The results of MTT and DAPI assays revealed the safety of conduits and proper cell attachment. Overall, the results obtained from various experiments showed that the novel PU/C/NBG conduit has better mechanical properties in terms of porosity, hydrophilicity, and biocompatibility in comparison with PU and PU/C conduits and could be a suitable candidate for peripheral nerve regeneration and axonal growth due to its repair potential.
Keywords: Bioglass; conduit; peripheral nerve; polyurethane; tissue engineering.