Stimulation of rat's sciatic nerve post-traumatic regeneration using plasmids expressing vascular endothelial growth factor and basic fibroblast growth factor

Abstract

The development of effective treatments for patients with peripheral nerve injury is an urgent task of biomedicine. «Gold» standard in restoring the integrity of nerve conduits is auto-nerve transplantation in which a peripheral nerve defect is corrected with autologous nerve graft. Here we propose a method for stimulating revascularization and regeneration of auto-nerve graft by a local injection of plasmid pBud-VEGFFGF2, expressing vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF) and basic fibroblast growth factor (FGF2). It is shown that direct injection of plasmid pBud-VEGF-FGF2 in the proximal and distal segments of nerve, as well as in the auto-nerve graft, stimulates the regeneration of the rat's sciatic nerve and restores motor activity.