Injuries of PNS are a major source of disabilities; the mobility of muscles gets impaired, sensations suffer distortions and can lead to painful neuropathies. For the functional recovery of the muscle, the time-lapse between the traumatic event and the regeneration of the nerve plays a key role.

The aim of the work is to achieve a peripheral motor nerve regeneration with a complete neuromuscular functional recovery. The dual strategy that is going to be followed consists in the acceleration of nerve regeneration and the simultaneous muscular stimulation.

A bi-compartmentalized silk fibroin nerve guidance conduit will be developed.¹ The first compartment will contain VEGFb in the wall and CMCht/PAMAM dendrimeric NPs containing GDNF within the hydrogel.² The second compartment will also contain VEGFb, but in doubled concentration. The same NPs will be used to transfect neurons with a plasmid encoding ChR, a photosensitive protein for the electrical stimulation of the muscle, also included in the second compartment.

1.           Carvalho, C. R. et al. Tunable Enzymatically Cross-Linked Silk Fibroin Tubular Conduits for Guided Tissue Regeneration. Adv. Healthc. Mater. 7, 1800186 (2018).

2.           Carvalho, M. R. et al. A semiautomated microfluidic platform for real-time investigation of nanoparticles’ cellular uptake and cancer cells’ tracking. Nanomedicine 12, 581–596 (2017).

J. M. Oliveira would like to thank to FCT for the fund provided under the program Investigador FCT 2015 (IF/01285/2015). This work is funded by the R&D Project NanOptoNerv - Nano-accelerated nerve regeneration and optogenetic empowering of neuromuscular functionality, with reference PTDC/NAN-MAT/29936/2017, financed by FCT.