Spun-sugar fibers spawn sweet technique for nerve repair

Spun-sugar fibers spawn sweet technique for nerve repair

This article is about Purdue University Researchers perhaps having found a relatively low-tech and cheap way of creating a scaffold for nerve repair. The researchers are using spun sugar filaments to create synthetic tubes, bundling them to simulate a nerve, and then using those as a scaffold. They believe that the scaffold could be used to promote regeneration if used as a bridge between severed nerve cells. The sugar fibers and technique at this time are being created specifically for axons in the peripheral nervous system. But as the technology increases, this could be evolved to other areas and to solve other problems like blood vessel regeneration. Because of the sugar fiber’s porous structure, they are also great at supplying nutrients and removing waste. Since the process is so simple (one researcher says "It's basically like making cotton candy) and cheap, it would be an easy material to manufacture and mass produce.

This article interested me because at the beginning of the year our first SNBAL articles were about using scaffolds to repair rabbit joints. Also, from what I've gathered this year, it has been a recurring motif in medical engineering that the right scaffold is the key to any regeneration, whether it be a finger, or in this case a nerve. The article has a funny title too.

The link to the article is as follows:

http://insciences.org/article.php?article_id=2800