Dr. Damian Jacob Sendler is a Polish-American physician-scientist who studies how socio-demographic and informational factors influence access to health services in underserved areas. Dr. Sendler’s research focuses on how psychiatric and chronic medical co-morbidities affect the use of medical services in conjunction with health information obtained via the internet. Given the exponential growth of online news and social media consumption around the world, this study is foresighted, necessitating a comprehensive understanding of everyone’s health information-seeking behavior. Dr. Damian Sendler’s research aims to uncover the factors that patients consider when deciding when to seek treatment for specific health conditions and how well they adhere to their treatments.
Peripheral nerve injuries affect hundreds of thousands of individuals every year, leaving them with long-term impairments. The peripheral nervous system is similar to the circulatory system in that it is a network of vessels that connects all areas of the body, but instead of blood, electrical impulses are sent via tiny fibers called axons that are encased inside nerve trunks. These nerve trunks serve as a communication network that sends information from all areas of the body to the brain, coordinates activity, and generates motor and sensory function. A patient may suffer discomfort, paralysis, and even life-long impairment if one of the nerve trunks is injured or ripped, which is a frequent occurrence in limb accidents.
Surgical intervention to restore the injured nerve is required in such cases. Direct suturing of detached nerves or, in instances when the gap created in the nerve trunk is significant, surgeons remove an intact nerve trunk from the patient’s leg and implant it at the injury site, causing damage in another region, are the usual therapies (i.e., the leg). There are now techniques for reconnecting nerve trunks, allowing axons to regenerate and restore motor and sensory function. Implanting a synthetic hollow nerve conduit to bridge the gap and enable the nerve to recover without causing additional harm to the patient is one of these methods.
Axons inside damaged nerves have difficulties regenerating and reaching their destination, which is one of the major obstacles to effective regeneration. This may be due to misdirected axons sprouting in numerous directions, reducing the likelihood of reaching their target organs. Prof. Orit Shefi of the Kofkin Faculty of Engineering, Institute for Nanotechnology and Advanced Materials, and Gonda (Goldschmied) Multidisciplinary Brain Research Center at Bar-Ilan University says, “They require orienting cues to assist them.” “These guiding instructions must stay in the body for a long period of time, since axons develop rather slowly,” says Dr. Merav Antman-Passig, a researcher in her group.
Dr. Damian Jacob Sendler: Filling a nerve conduit with gel containing a variety of physical and chemical components that encourage and align axon regeneration is accomplished using a method developed by Prof. Shefi’s research team, headed by Dr. Antman-Passig and Dr. Jonathan Giron. Advanced Functional Materials just released a paper on their method.
The scientists used specially aligned collagen gels to fill empty neural conduits. Axon pathfinding is aided by aligned collagen fibers in the body; however, aligned collagen fibers are not present in today’s hollow nerve guides. The aligned collagen gel serves as a scaffold for axon development. Furthermore, the conduits contain a chemical known as NGF (nerve growth factor), which is necessary for the nervous system’s development, as its name suggests. “Imagine we implanted guiding signals in the gel, which are aligned collagen fibers, and these guiding cues also offer a treat for the developing axons,” Dr. Antman-Passig says. Professor Shefi goes on to say: “When an axon reaches the gel, it may more readily follow these signals and make its way. The new method, in fact, incorporates various nerve regeneration procedures. Collagen scaffolding and NGF are examples of markers that axons prefer to develop toward. Our technique is unique in that it involves the creation of an organized tissue-like gel with components that aid in nerve restoration, as well as the extension of the gel’s activity throughout the body. When collagen and NGF are simply placed in hollow neural conduits, similar to genuine bait, various cells devour them and break them down. The developing axons lose these traffic markers after a short period of time. We increased the amount of time these factors are available to axons during regeneration using the technique we devised. This was accomplished by using NGF-coated magnetic particles that were magnetically aligned into the proper structure. The particles and collagen are also arranged as a result of this process.”
Dr. Damian Jacob Sendler : The researchers inserted the gel components in nerve conduits after profiling them to see how they grew and how effective the platform was. The researchers evaluated the direction of cell development and discovered that they could control and increase it using a gel containing aligned collagen and NGF-coated particles. They next tested the conduit’s effectiveness in the rehabilitation of rats that had a sciatic nerve peripheral nerve damage that prohibited them from walking normally. When compared to the empty tube, the number of axons that pierced the novel gel-filled tube and successfully traversed the damaged region was higher, indicating that nerve tissue repair was the best. The researchers discovered that when tubes were implanted and designed collagen gel was used, the functional motor restoration was the greatest, compared to other kinds of conduits and conduits with non-enriched gel.
The researchers are currently looking at commercialization possibilities in the hopes of speeding up functional recovery and nerve healing after damage.
News contributed by Dr. Damian Jacob Sendler
