Multiscale biomimetic design for peripheral nerve repair: Beyond passive bridging.

Authors

Mouyuan Sun, Zhixu He, Yaxian Luo, Luying Qin, Binhao Jin, Shuangyang Li, Xuankai Fan, Jingyu Zhang, Xinyi Feng, Lianjie Peng, Tao Qiu, Tian Zhang, Huiming Wang, Yan Tu, Mengfei Yu

Published in

Materials today. Bio. Volume 39. Pages 103433. Epub Jul 07, 2026.

Abstract

Peripheral nerve injury persists as a formidable clinical challenge, particularly in long-gap and complex lesions where surgical intervention frequently yields suboptimal functional restoration. Current nerve guidance conduits (NGCs) afford limited advantage owing to their passive bridging nature, incapable of recapitulating the native nerve's hierarchical architecture, bioactive microenvironment, or temporally coordinated repair programs. Informed by bibliometric and meta-analytic evidence, this review redefines biomimetic peripheral nerve repair as an orchestrated transition from passive bridging to biologically instructed, adaptive neural interfaces. Departing from a mere enumeration of structural, functional, spatiotemporal, and cross-species biomimicry, each axis is endowed with a specific functional mandate. Structural biomimicry imposes directional and hierarchical guidance, functional biomimicry re-establishes the regenerative niche, spatiotemporal biomimicry synchronizes with stage-dependent repair requirements, and cross-species biomimicry expands the reservoir of transferable design principles. The ways in which these cues converge, compete, or synergize within composite conduits are systematically examined, together with the imperative of prioritizing their configurations for manufacturability, sterilization, regulatory feasibility, and long-gap validation. This synthesis crystallizes a design logic for next-generation NGCs, guiding their evolution from static scaffolds toward adaptive, manufacturable, and clinically translatable regenerative interfaces.

PMID:
42472010
Bibliographic data and abstract were imported from PubMed on 19 Jul 2026.

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