Majid Salehi - Department of Tissue Engineering, School of Medicine, Shahroud University of Medical Sciences, Shahroud, Iran
Mahdi Naseri-Nosar - Department of Tissue Engineering, School of Medicine, Shahroud University of Medical Sciences, Shahroud, Iran
Somayeh Ebrahimi-Barough - Department of Tissue Engineering and Applied Cell Sciences, School of Advanced Technologies in Medicine, Tehran University of Medical Sciences, Tehran, Iran
Arash Khojasteh - Department of Tissue Engineering, School of Medicine, Shahroud University of Medical Sciences, Shahroud, Iran

The current study aimed to enhance the efficacy of peripheral nerve regeneration using a biodegradable neural graft conduit as a carrier to transplant allogeneic Schwann cells (SCs). The conduit was prepared from polyurethane (PU) and gelatin nanofibers (GNFs) containing melatonin (MLT) and platelet rich plasma (PRP) by thermally induced phase separation method. The prepared conduit from PU and GNFs had the porosity of 87.17±1.89%, the contact angle of 78.17±5.30° and the ultimate tensile strength and Young’s modulus of 5.40±0.98 MPa and 3.13±0.65 GPa respectively. The conduit lost about 14% of its weight after 60 days in distilled water. The produced conduit exhibited favorable cytocompatibility toward SCs. For functional analysis, the conduit was seeded with 1.5×104 SCs (PU/GNFs/PRP/MLT/SCs) and implanted into a 10 mm sciatic nerve defect of Wistar rats. Four control groups were used: (1) Negative control (with injury but without surgical interventions), (2) Autograft, (3) PU/GNFs/SCs and (4) PU/GNFs/PRP/SCs. The results of sciatic functional index, hot plate latency, compound muscle action potential amplitude and latency, weight-loss percentage of wet gastrocnemius muscle and histological analysis using hematoxylin-eosin and Luxol fast blue staining, demonstrated that the PU/GNFs/PRP/MLT/SCs conduit had comparable nerve regeneration to autograft group which can be considered as a potential replacement to autogenous nerve grafts

Neural graft conduit, Schwann cells, Melatonin, Platelet rich plasma