Polymer Scaffolds for peripheral nerve injury repair

Abstract

The peripheral nervous system (PNS) plays a vital role in regulating physiological functions, and it is closely related to one’s quality of life. Unfortunately, various factors such as natural disasters, congenital diseases, accidents, degenerative diseases, and surgical injuries can cause serious damage to the nervous system, so peripheral nerve injury (PNI) repair has emerged as a highly researched and important research field. Autologous nerve transplantation has been regarded as the “gold standard” for PNI repair, while it is far from optimal owing to the limited availability and length of donor nerves, morbidity at the donor site, and the request for secondary surgery. Therefore, it is very urgent to find an alternative solution to repair damaged nervous system. Employing polymer scaffold is one promising strategy in PNI repair due to their regulated microstructures with specific length and size, superior comprehensive mechanical properties, large-scale preparation with unlimited source, unrequired secondary surgery, and tailored degradation rate. Herein, to assist readers in comprehensively understanding polymer scaffolds for PNI repair, we summarized the polymer scaffolds based on scaffold microenvironment, materials, molding methods, and main challenges in PNI repair. Finally, we put forward their future development trends and some key issues be addressed urgently.