editorial peripheral nerve regeneration: mechanism, cell...

EditorialPeripheral Nerve Regeneration: Mechanism,Cell Biology, and Therapies

Xiaofeng Jia,1,2 Mario I. Romero-Ortega,3,4 and Yang D. Teng5

1 Department of Neurosurgery, University of Maryland School of Medicine, 10 South Pine Street,Medical School Teaching Facility 559 A, Baltimore, MD 21201, USA

2Department of Biomedical Engineering, Physical Medicine & Rehabilitation, Anesthesiology & Critical Care Medicine,Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, MD 21205, USA

3Department of Bioengineering, The University of Texas at Dallas, Richardson, TX, USA4 Surgery Department, University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center, TX, USA5Departments of Neurosurgery and Physical Medicine & Rehabilitation, Harvard Medical School, Brigham and Women’s Hospital,Spaulding Rehabilitation Hospital and VA Boston Healthcare System, Boston, MA, USA

Correspondence should be addressed to Xiaofeng Jia; [email protected], Mario I. Romero-Ortega; [email protected],and Yang D. Teng; yang [email protected]

Received 10 September 2014; Accepted 10 September 2014; Published 23 December 2014

Copyright © 2014 Xiaofeng Jia et al. This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License,which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

Peripheral nerve injury has perplexed neuroscientists, neu-rologists, plastic surgeons, and bioengineers for decades.Despite the spontaneous ability of the adult peripheral nervesystem to regenerate after injury, optimal and universaltreatments capable of achieving full functional recoveryare still unavailable. It is the suboptimal results obtainedwith current gold standard autograft surgery methods thatcontinue to motivate vigorous research around the world forestablishing biosynthetic and/or cell-based alternatives, aim-ing at elucidating the underlyingmechanisms and developingnew regenerative medicine approaches in order to maximizefunctional nerve regeneration and to prevent occurrence ofneuropathic pain.

In this special issue, six papers are published that pro-vide a global view of the challenges in peripheral nerverepair research and therapeutic development: from advancedbiomaterial research to the resolution overcoming clinicalpractice limitations, which bears the promise of improvingclinical outcomes for patients with nerve injuries.

D. Grinsell and C. P. Keating presented a current view ofthe clinical results achieved with peripheral nerve regenera-tion using nerve conduits and synthetic bondingmaterials. E.P. Knott and collaborators elaborated on recent advancementregarding the molecular response of peripheral nerves to

injury insults, investigating a specific connection of the intra-cellular cyclic adenosine monophosphate (cAMP) cascadeand its modulation that might help overcome molecularinhibitors of axonal growth to serve as a strategy for PNregeneration. For the biomaterials that have been shownor proposed to activate growth-promoting responses afternerve injury, P. Ramburrun et al., in their paper, demon-strated a comprehensive strategy that was used to achievesustained release of bioactive molecules from nerve conduitsas a possible clinical application for peripheral nerve injuryrepair. The authors gave careful consideration to criticalaspects of the delivery of biologically active factors intothe injured nerve and presented state-of-the-art chemicalengineering methods to ensure long-term controlled releaseof therapeutic reagents. Electrical stimulation is one of themethodologies that have been conventionally used to over-come the progressive loss of the nerve regenerative capacitywhen lesions occur far from the target organ. D. C. Mirandade Assis et al. compared the role of stimulation frequencyon the use of transcutaneous nerve stimulation (TENS) asa method to stimulate peripheral nerve regeneration andreported confirmative experimental data.

Besides functional deficits, almost all types of nervelesions could result in development of neuropathic pain. In

Hindawi Publishing CorporationBioMed Research InternationalVolume 2014, Article ID 145304, 2 pageshttp://dx.doi.org/10.1155/2014/145304

2 BioMed Research International

this issue, V. Magnaghi and collaborators reported that anagonist-mediated modulation of the gamma-aminobutyricacid (GABA) system showed efficacy for ameliorating neu-ropathic pain. Finally, the report by H. Su et al. showed thatadministration of lithium, normally used for the treatmentof mood disorders such as bipolar disorders and depression,was beneficial for the nerve regrowth in a model of brachialplexus root avulsion.The study demonstrated that the lithiumtreatment reduced metabolic demand of motor neurons andincreased motor neuron survival after root avulsion injury.

It is our hope that the compilation of these researchreports would provide an updated view of regenerativebiology of peripheral nerve injury as well as academic insightthat may facilitate further improvement of current clinicalprotocols for peripheral nerve repair. Most importantly, wewish that new data published here would enable developmentof novel ideas to move our field forward.

Acknowledgments

Dr. Jia was supported in part by R01HL118084 from NIH,09SDG2110140 fromAmericanHeart Association, andMary-land Stem Cell Research Fund (2013-MSCRFE-146-00).

Xiaofeng JiaMario I. Romero-Ortega

Yang D. Teng

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