March 19, 2009
Researchers at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine have engineered transplantable living nerve tissue that encourages and guides regeneration in an animal model. About 300,000 Americans suffer peripheral nerve injuries every year, in many cases resulting in permanent loss of motor function, sensory function, or both. But there are insufficient means for repair, according to neurosurgeons. "We have created a three-dimensional neural network, a living conduit in culture, which can be transplanted en masse to an injury site," explains senior author Douglas H. Smith, MD, Professor, Department of Neurosurgery and Director of the Center for Brain Injury and Repair at Penn. Smith and colleagues have successfully grown, transplanted, and integrated axon bundles that act as "jumper cables" to the host tissue in order to bridge a damaged section of nerve.