Dynamic culture of a thermosensitive collagen hydrogel improves tissue-engineered peripheral nerve

(Nanowerk News) Tissue engineering technologies offer new treatment strategies for the repair of peripheral nerve injury, but cell loss between seeding and adhesion to the scaffold remains inevitable.
In a study reported in Neural Regeneration Research ("Dynamic culture of a thermosensitive collagen hydrogel as an extracellular matrix improves the construction of tissue-engineered peripheral nerve"), a thermosensitive collagen hydrogel remained as a liquid when kept at temperatures below 10°C and gelled when the temperature was increased to 37°C in an incubator for 30 minutes, which was used as an extracellular matrix and combined with bone marrow mesenchymal stem cells to construct tissue-engineered peripheral nerve composites in vitro.
Lund
Relationship between bone marrow mesenchymal stem cells and the thermosensitive collagen hydrogel composite (scanning electron microscopy). (A) The cross section of the composite showed that collagen fibers (red arrows) filled in the space between the poly-L-lactic acid fibers (blue arrows). (B) The longitudinal section of the composite showed that seeded cells (red arrows) were adhered onto the collagen and po­ly-L-lactic acid fibers (blue arrows). Scale bars: 43 µm (A), 30 µm (B). (© Neural Regeneration Research)
Results from DNA analysis and scanning electron microscope indicate that tissue-engineered composites formed with thermosensitive collagen hydrogel in dynamic culture can maintain larger numbers of seeded cells by avoiding cell loss during the initial adhesion stage; moreover, seeded cells are well-distributed throughout the material, which is of great significance for in vitro construction of tissue-engineered peripheral nerve composites.
Source: Neural Regeneration Research