Silicon-induced biofilm improves peripheral nerve defect in rats mediated by VEGF/VEGFR2/ERK

ABSTRACT

Background: Injury of peripheral nerve capable of regeneration with much poorer prognosis affects people’s life quality. The recovery of nerve function after transplantation for peripheral nerve injury remain a worldwide problem. Silicon-induced biofilms as vascularized biological conduits can promote nerve regeneration by encapsulating autologous or allogeneic nerve graft.

Objective: We proposed to explore the effect of silicon-induced biofilms on nerves regeneration and whether the VEGF/VEGFR2/ERK pathway was involved in the present study.

Methods: Biofilms around the transplanted nerves in peripheral nerve injury rats were induced by silicon. Vascularization and proteins related to VEGF/VEGFR2/ERK were measured. Pathology and morphology of nerves were investigated after encapsulating the transplanted nerves by silicon-induced biofilms.

Results: Our results indicated that the biofilms induced by silicon for 6 weeks showed the most intensive vascularization and the optimal effect on nerve regeneration. Moreover, silicon-induced biofilms for 4, 6 and 8 weeks could significantly secrete VEGF with the highest content at week 6 after induction. VEGFR2, VEGF, p-VEGFR2, ERK1, ERK2, p-ERK1 and p-ERK2 were expressed in the biofilms. p-VEGFR2, p-ERK1 and p-ERK2 expression were different at each time point and significantly increased at week 6 compared with that at week 4 or week 8 which was consistent with that 6 week of was the optimum time for biofilms induction to improve the nerve repair after peripheral nerve injury.

Conclusion: Our results suggested that combination of silicon-induced autologous vascularized biofilm and autologous transplantation may promote the repair of rat sciatic nerve defect quickly through VEGF/VEGFR2/ERK pathway.

KEYWORDS:

• Silicon-induced biofilm
• peripheral nerve
• autologous transplantation
• vascularization
• VEGF
• ERK

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Data availability statement

All data would be provided from the corresponding author if necessary.

Author contributions

Jun Wang: Writing – Original draft, Methodology, Data Curation, Writing; Dong Mao and BeiChen Dai: Formal analysis, Data Curation; YongJun Rui: Conceptualization, Review & Editing, Project administration.

Additional information

Funding

The author(s) reported there is no funding associated with the work featured in this article.