518 New In Vitro Model of Traumatic Brain Injury to Assess Biomaterial Based Regenerative Strategies

Penetrating traumatic brain injury (pTBI) management is largely supportive, with no clinically established regenerative therapies. Neurocompatible biomaterials offer a high potential to promote regenerative mechanisms but facile, high throughput, pathomimetic in vitro pTBI models for the developmental testing of neuro-materials is lacking. Method A mouse mixed glial culture system was utilised within which penetrating injuries could be induced. DuraGen PlusTM – an FDA approved neurosurgical grade biomaterial could be implanted into lesions to assess cell-biomaterial responses. Reactive gliosis (astrocytic morphological responses/GFAP expression) and microglial infiltration (Iba1 expression) were assessed/quantified. Results Key pathological features of pTBI were observed in the model, with the ability to (i) introduce reproducible lesions (diameter 949 ± 26 μm) and (ii) for DuraGen PlusTM to be implanted into lesions. Peri-lesional astrocytes displayed hypertrophic palisading morphologies and GFAP upregulation, analogous to gliosis in vivo. Significant microglial numbers infiltrated the DuraGen PlusTM implant at 7 days post-lesion (132.41 ± 15.83 cells/mm2) versus lesion only (82.04 ± 5.11 cells/mm2), p < 0.05). Conclusions We have developed a novel, neuropathomimetic pTBI model, wherein biomaterial implantation enables investigation of neural cell-biomaterial responses. This model can facilitate early-stage evaluation of novel biomaterials as high throughput, inexpensive and facile screening tool.