Transcriptional analysis of the healing response of wounded nerves treated with collagen and silicone tubes

Abstract

This study examines the transcriptional differences between nerve wounds treated with silicone tubes and those treated with collagen nerve regeneration templates. The primary motivation for the study is to test the hypothesis that the discrepancy between the low-quality regenerate that forms in a silicone tube and the high-quality regenerate that forms in a collagen tube is due to differences in gene transcription. We used in vivo experiments on rat sciatic nerves with the use of real-time PCR to study the mRNA expression levels of certain inflammatory cytokines and contractile proteins after injury in both silicone-treated and collagen-treated nerve wounds. The contents of the wound site were analyzed on days 1, 3, 7, 14, and 21 following injury. The results of this experiment showed that although a difference in mRNA expression of [alpha]-SM actin is significantly higher at later time points in silicone-treated wounded nerves as compared to collagen-treated wounded nerves, there is little or no significant difference in the mRNA expression of TGF-[beta]1, TGF-[beta]2, and TGF-[beta]3 in wounds from the two devices. This suggests that the presence of a collagen regeneration nerve template does not direct the wound healing process at a transcriptional level.