The highly complex nature of spinal cord injuries (SCIs) requires design of novel biomaterials that can stimulate cellular regeneration and functional recovery. Promising SCI treatments use biomaterial scaffolds, which provide bioactive cues to the cells in order to trigger neural regeneration in the spinal cord. In this work, the use of peptide nanofibers is demonstrated, presenting protein binding and cellular adhesion epitopes in a rat model of SCI. The self‐assembling peptide molecules are designed to form nanofibers, which display heparan sulfate mimetic and laminin mimetic epitopes to the cells in the spinal cord. These neuroactive nanofibers are found to support adhesion and viability of dorsal root ganglion neurons as well as neurite outgrowth in vitro and enhance tissue integrity after 6 weeks of injury in vivo. Treatment with the peptide nanofiber scaffolds also show significant behavioral improvement. These results demonstrate that it is possible to facilitate regeneration especially in the white matter of the spinal cord, which is usually damaged during the accidents using bioactive 3D nanostructures displaying high densities of laminin and heparan sulfate‐mimetic epitopes on their surfaces.

中文翻译：

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用于脊髓损伤后再生的神经活性肽纳米纤维

脊髓损伤 (SCI) 的高度复杂性需要设计能够刺激细胞再生和功能恢复的新型生物材料。有希望的 SCI 治疗使用生物材料支架，它为细胞提供生物活性线索，以触发脊髓中的神经再生。在这项工作中，展示了肽纳米纤维的使用，在 SCI 大鼠模型中呈现蛋白质结合和细胞粘附表位。自组装肽分子被设计成纳米纤维，向脊髓中的细胞展示硫酸乙酰肝素模拟物和层粘连蛋白模拟物表位。发现这些神经活性纳米纤维支持背根神经节神经元的粘附和活力以及体外神经突的生长，并在体内损伤 6 周后增强组织完整性。用肽纳米纤维支架治疗也显示出显着的行为改善。这些结果表明，使用具有高密度层粘连蛋白和硫酸乙酰肝素模拟表位的生物活性 3D 纳米结构可以促进脊髓白质的再生，尤其是在事故中通常会受损的脊髓白质。