Nerve regeneration by human dental pulp stem cells in hydrogel based scaffolds: characterization by label-free optical imaging (R-6409)

A variety of traumas and diseases can cause peripheral nerve injury (PNI). In the process of spontaneous healing, Schwann cells (SC) are important players as they align to guide axonal outgrowth and produce myelin sheaths to allow fast neural action potential propagation. However, large gap nerve injuries require artificial bridging strategies for repair. In neural tissue engineering, autologous SC have been successfully used in 3D scaffolds to promote neuroregeneration, but their painful and laborious isolation raises the need for alternative cell populations, such as human dental pulp stem cells (hDPSC). These hDPSC possess SC differentiation capacities in 2D environments as shown during the first year of my PhD. In this project, I aim to investigate the neuroregenerative potential of SC-differentiated hDPSC (SC-hDPSC) in 2D and 3D. In the final step of this project, a collagen hydrogel with aligned SC-hDPSC is transplanted in an animal model of PNI to test its therapeutic potential. In the various steps, advanced label-free optical methods are applied to monitor stem cell differentiation and functional measurements. The reason is that many conventional microscopy techniques use exogenous labels thereby possibly influencing the behaviour of the stem cells and prohibiting the subsequent use of the cells for further exploration. This project will contribute to the field of neural tissue engineering supported by the application of emergent label-free optical imaging tools.

Keywords:biopsy characterization

Disciplines:Biophysics