Strategies of polyhydroxyalkanoates modification for the medical application in neural regeneration/nerve tissue engineering

Neural regeneration was once considered to be impossible, especially in the central nervous system where neural regeneration comprise the generation of new neurons, glia, axons, myelin, and synapses. Until recently, neural stem cells/neural progenitor cells (NSCs/NPCs) were identified from various areas of brain and brought hopes to the neural repair and regeneration. Tissue engineering has revolutionized the current neural regeneration technology and it has become a pioneering interdisciplinary field in the areas of biomedical research. Polyhydoxyalkanoate (PHA) as one of biodegradable material has been successfully used as tissue engineering materials. It has also been applied in nerve tissue engineering due to the high biocompatibility and low cytotoxicity. Over the past 10 years, different kinds of modification strategies have been undertaken to improve the properties of PHA to fit the requirements from various fields. Several members of PHA family have been attempted for neural regeneration. This article reviewed the recent modification strategies for improving the properties of PHA and highlighted the pioneer applications in neural regeneration.