Grant: Master's Award: Canada Graduate Scholarships

"Peripheral nerve injury is a challenging clinical problem that has a considerable impact on an individual's quality of life and function. Functional outcomes following peripheral nerve injury remain poor despite the use of direct repair, nerve transplant and tendon transfer. Nerve transfer has emerged as a promising technique to support motor and sensory reinnervation. Surgically, nerve transfer involves taking nerves with less critical roles and transferring the proximal cut end to the distal end of an injured nerve. The purpose of this study is twofold. One will be to create a nerve transfer mouse model of brachial plexus injury. The rationale for a mouse forelimb model is based on several advantages over the standard rat hindlimb model. This model is biomechanically more similar to the human upper extremity, where nerve transfers are most often clinically performed. Furthermore, the use of mice enables genetic manipulation for the elucidation of cellular mechanisms of nerve regeneration following nerve transfer. Second will be to compare supercharged end-to-side and end-to-end nerve transfer coaptation techniques. Our surgical model will utilize a median nerve transection where the musculocutaneous nerve is transferred to the distal stump of the median nerve. For 12 weeks following nerve transfer, a grip strength test will be used to assess the functional recovery of the median innervated digit flexor muscles. At the end of this period, retrograde labelling and tissue histomorphometry will be used to quantify reinnervation between the two coaptation methods. We hypothesize that end-to-end nerve transfer will result in superior functional outcomes compared to the supercharged end-to-side, validating this new model of nerve transfer."