title: Chapter 11: Tissue engineering of peripheral nerves.
abstract: Tissue engineering of peripheral nerves has seen an increasing interest over the last years and, similarly to many other fields of regenerative medicine, great expectations have risen within the general public to its potential clinical application in the treatment of damaged nerves. However, in spite of the scientific advancements, applications to the patients is still very limited and it appears that to optimize the strategy for the tissue engineering of the peripheral nerves in the clinical view, researchers have to strive for a new level of innovation which will bring together (in a multitranslational approach) the main pillars of tissue engineering: namely (1) microsurgery, (2) cell and tissue transplantation, (3) material science, and (4) gene transfer. This review paper provides an overview of these four key approaches to peripheral nerve tissue engineering. While some of these issues will also be specifically addressed in other papers in this special issue on peripheral nerve regeneration of the International Review of Neurobiology, in this paper we will focus on an example of successful translational research in tissue engineering, namely nerve reconstruction by muscle-vein-combined nerve scaffolds.
authors.affiliation: Reconstructive Microsurgery Unit, Department of Orthopedics, C.T.O. Hospital, Turin 10126, Italy.
authors.forename: Bruno
authors.initials: B
authors.lastname: Battiston
authors.forename: Stefania
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Raimondo
authors.forename: Pierluigi
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Tos
authors.forename: Valentina
authors.initials: V
authors.lastname: Gaidano
authors.forename: Chiara
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Audisio
authors.forename: Anna
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Scevola
authors.forename: Isabelle
authors.initials: I
authors.lastname: Perroteau
authors.forename: Stefano
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Geuna
mesh_terms: D000818:Animals; D001672:Biocompatible Materials; D040761:Biomimetic Materials; D018014:Gene Transfer Techniques; D006801:Humans; D008866:Microsurgery / Q000379:methods; D009132:Muscles / Q000637:transplantation; D019635:Neurosurgical Procedures / Q000379:methods; D010525:Peripheral Nerves / Q000601:surgery* / Q000637:transplantation*; D023822:Tissue Engineering / Q000379:methods*; D054457:Tissue Scaffolds; D014182:Transplantation, Autologous / Q000379:methods; D014680:Veins / Q000637:transplantation
chemical_list: D001672:Biocompatible Materials