EFRI BioFlex: Electrically Mediated Complex Tissue Regeneration

该提案的重点是创造一种新颖的、电刺激的、生物可吸收的电纺聚合物支架，能够加速肌肉骨骼组织的再生，重点是肩袖的愈合。组织工程已经应用于骨、韧带、肌腱、软骨、肌肉、神经和血管等个体组织，在临床领域取得了一定程度的成功。完整肢体再生的复杂任务留给了发育生物学家，他们经常研究具有自我再生能力的无脊椎动物。从基于支架的组织工程中吸取的经验教训，当与发育和干细胞生物学以及电子工程相结合时，可以应用于复杂器官和组织的再生。这种结构将根据聚磷腈化学、纤维大小和纤维方向进行结构和微调，以创建一种导电支架，该支架具有模仿天然肌肉肌腱界面的区域特定机械性能。该系统将在兔模型中进行测试，其中肩胛下肌肌腱将从骨中横切或不横切肩胛下神经。

The proposal focuses on the creation of novel, electrically-stimulated, bioresorbable electrospun polymeric scaffolds capable of accelerating regeneration of musculoskeletal tissue, with a focus on rotator cuff healing. Tissue engineering has been applied to individual tissues like bone, ligament, tendon, cartilage, muscle, nerve, and blood vessels with a degree of success in the clinical realm. The complex task of full limb regeneration has been left to developmental biologists often studying invertebrates capable of self-regeneration. Lessons learned from scaffold-based tissue engineering can, when blended with developmental and stem cell-based biology and electrical engineering, be applied to the regeneration of complex organs and tissues. This construct will be structured and fine-tuned based on polyphosphazene chemistry, fiber size, and fiber orientation to create an electrically conductive scaffold that exhibits region-specific mechanical properties that mimic those seen in a native muscle-tendon interface. The system will be tested in a rabbit model in which the subscapularis tendon will be transected from the bone with or without transecting the subscapular nerve.