New approaches to bridge nerve gaps: development of a novel drug-delivering nerve conduit

Contemporary bridging techniques for repairing nerve gaps caused by trauma require autologous nerve grafts, which are difficult to harvest and handle and result in significant donor site deficit. Several nerve conduits with axon growth-enhancing potential have been proposed, developed and tested over the past fifteen years. In this work, prototypes of a nerve conduit designed to bridge large nerve gaps (≥10mm) end-to-end were incorporated with concentric drug reservoirs for constant and controlled drug delivery to enhance axon growth. These devices were designed, fabricated and tested in vitro in amber glass vials with bovine serum albumin in order to determine the drug release kinetics for future application. Our devices have shown the capability to deliver the drug of interest over a 6-day period.