Spinal cord crushed injury is clinically common. Promoting targeted neural regeneration at the crushed site of spinal cord could be important for the repair. It has been demonstrated in our previous work that native human BDNF fused with a collagen-binding domain (CBD-BDNF) can bind to collagen specifically to exert the neurotrophic effect on promoting axonal regeneration. After injury, collagen is highly accumulated at the injury site. We thus speculate that CBD-BDNF will bind to the extracellular matrix collagen and concentrate at the injury site to improve the therapy. Using the rat spinal cord crushed injury model, we have found that CBD-BDNF by one-time intrathecally injection could be retained and concentrated at the injury site for a longer time than native BDNF without collagen-binding domain. CBD-BDNF could promote better neural regeneration and locomotion recovery.

Keywords: Collagen; Drug delivery; Nerve regeneration; Wound healing