Neural tissue repair/regeneration

Neural tissue repair in order to treat nerve damage or neuropathy arising from a spinal cord or cerebral injury essentially requires the intervention of tissue engineering because axons are unable to regenerate on their own. Hence, recent advances in neural tissue engineering provide suitable and promising substitutes... 

Ellis-Behnke, R., Schneider, G., and Zhang, S. Self-Assembling Peptides for Regeneration and Repair of Neural Tissue, 2004-968790 2005287186 (2005). 

Schmidt, C., Leach, J. Neural tissue engineering strategies for repair and regeneration. Rev. Biomed. Eng. 5, 293-347 (2003)... 

Schmidt, CE and Leach, JB. 2003. Neural tissue engineering Strategies for repair and regeneration. Ann Rev Biomed Eng 5(l) 293-347. 

HA is a popular material for brain tissue regeneration because it is normally present in high levels in the ECM of connective, epithelial and neural tissues [31, 32]. HA is known to play roles in cellular processes like cell proliferation, morphogenesis, inflammation, and wound repair [33]. It has also been reported that HA scaffolds could reduce glial scar formation after implantation [34], The recent progress on HA-based scaffolds for brain regeneration is briefly summarised in the following section. 

Similar neural applications of aligned nanoflbers include spinal cord repair and regeneration of aligned neural tracks in the brain. These applications, however, are much more difflcult to address due to the increased inflammatory response in CNS tissue, as well as the lack of natural regeneration in CNS tissues. 

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