Repairing sciatic nerve injury with an EPO-loaded nerve conduit and sandwiched-in strategy of transplanting mesenchymal stem cells.

Transplantation of a biosynthetic nerve conduit carrying neuro-protective cytokines is promising for treating peripheral nerve injury. Here we developed a novel strategy for repairing sciatic nerve injury by EPO-loaded Chitosan nerve conduit (EPO/Chi) and sandwiched-in transplantation of mesenchymal stem cells (MSCs). Then, the beneficial effect of EPO/Chi + MSCs on nerve regeneration was also further investigated by in vitro cellular experiments. In vivo experiment showed that combination of EPO-loaded Chitosan nerve conduit with MSCs could significantly accelerate nerve healing and improve morphological repair. Furthermore, the in vitro cellular experiments results demonstrated that the loaded EPO in nerve conduit could significantly reinforce the repair performance of both MSCs and Schwann cells, which may also contribute to the therapeutic outcome of the EPO/Chi + MSCs strategy. Collectively, the EPO-loaded nerve conduit and sandwiched-in transplantation of MSCs we reported in the study may represent a new potential strategy for peripheral nerve reconstruction.