ABSTRACT
Injury to the nervous system leads to a cascade of events that eventually inhibits regeneration. The repair mechanism involves a lot of challenge and many attempts have been made to regenerate the damaged nerves by various conventional surgical methods like the use of the direct end-to-end repair method as well as the employment of natural nerve grafts. However, longer gaps generated in severed nerve or lesion formations, leading to significant tissue damage, demanded better therapeutic approaches. Recent advances have paved the way for the use of biodegradable three-dimensional polymeric scaffolds that provide support and guidance to the seeded or endogenous cells at the injury site. These polymeric scaffolds apart from being biocompatible and porous also mimicked the extracellular microenvironment of neural tissue, resulting in enhanced recovery. These polymers can also be used as delivery vehicles for bioactive molecules, cells, etc. This contribution describes the target areas for neuroengineering strategies, the limitations in their inbuilt recovery mechanism, and the different formats of the polymeric scaffolds used for improved neural regeneration.
