TITLE:
Strategies of polyhydroxyalkanoates modification for the medical application in neural regeneration/nerve tissue engineering
AUTHORS:
Xiaoyun Lu, Leilei Wang, Zhiqian Yang, Haixia Lu
KEYWORDS:
PHA; Modification; Neural Regeneration; Nerve Tissue Engineering
JOURNAL NAME:
Advances in Bioscience and Biotechnology,
Vol.4 No.6,
June
24,
2013
ABSTRACT:
Neural regeneration was once considered to be impossible, especially in the central
nervous system where neural regeneration comprise the generation of new
neurons, glia, axons, myelin, and synapses. Until recently, neural stem cells/neural
progenitor cells (NSCs/NPCs) were identified from various areas of brain and
brought hopes to the neural repair and regeneration. Tissue engineering has revolutionized the current
neural regeneration technology and it has become a pioneering interdisciplinary
field in the areas of
biomedical research. Polyhydoxyalkanoate (PHA) as one of biodegradable material
has been successfully used as tissue engineering materials. It has also been
applied in nerve tissue engineering due to the high biocompatibility and low
cytotoxicity. Over the past 10 years, different kinds of modification strategies have been
undertaken to improve the properties of PHA to fit the requirements from various fields. Several members of PHA
family have been attempted for neural regeneration. This article reviewed the recent modification
strategies for improving the
properties of PHA and highlighted the pioneer applications in neural regeneration.