Development and efficiency assesment of conductive materials for peripherial nerve system regeneration

Regeneration of nerve tissue is the slowest healing tissue in body. Especially the nerve defects and losts after accidents are ones of the main health problems. Peripheric nerve defects comes first in those injuries. These injuries are observed 2.8% of traumatic patients and it usually results function losts or disorders maintaining lifelong. Moreover, observation of nervous pain can be possible. Therefore, peripheric nerve degeneration is one of the health problems that should be prevented or treated due to socialeconomical effects that affecting human life quality of individuals. Axons are the essential nerve vehicles that carry electrical signals across the nerves. Regeneration of axon defects in peripheric systems occur with proliferation of Schwan cells which wraps the nerve fibers and generate myelin sheath. Nerve grafts must be used for the degeneration larger than 5 mm in order to obtain connection between two ends of the nerve defect. Due to tissue compatibility problem in use of allografts and autografts, synthetic grafts were focused. With this perspective, one of the important approach of tissue engineering became development of alternative nerve graft. These grafts are designed as conduit in order to guide peripheric nerve fibers. These grafts should also be biodegradable in order to provide complete regeneration. Nerve guide conduits containing variable pore structures indicate different production techniques. The inner part of these nerve conduits can be empty or fills with fibres and spongy structure. In order to make more effective nerve conduits, nanotechnological improvements were used. Especially addition of excellent conductive and biocompatible nanofibers and nanotubes into the nerve conduits have important roles in stimulation of nerve activates. In this study, novel and effective biodegradable nerve conduit systems will be developed to be use in surgical operations for fixing function losts arises from peripheric nerve defects. Nerve conduit made of this nanocomposite system is aimed to replace with nerve tissue. Therefore, structures belonging to nerve conduits in this project will be first in literature and patents.