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Show 10 Nosheen Khan college of engineering Background: Damage to the peripheral nervous system may result in loss of function of an organ or body part. Numerous studies have established that this lost function can be restored by using stimulating devices, such as nerve cuff electrodes. However, previous studies have found that the chronic implantation of nerve cuffs results in changes to the underlying nerve fibers and inflammation due to a foreign body response. This response could be a contributing cause to the failure of encapsulated implants. In an at-tempt to mitigate this previously observed foreign body response, we investigated the use of cell-derived extra-cellular matrix (ECM) for use as a nerve cuff. Methods: Using rats as the subject, ECM cuffs were implanted for eight weeks around the right sciatic nerve. Nerves were then prepared for examination using a series of processing steps including embed-ding in Epon, thin sectioning, staining, and imaging. Images were quantified for morphometric param-eters including fascicle areas, fiber counts, densities, and packing (calculated by taking the percent of the fascicular area occupied by fibers), and the measurement of myelin thickness (using g-ratio values which represent the ratio of the fiber diameter to the axon diameter) and fiber diameter distributions. Analyses also included an unpaired t-test of control and implanted quantitative parameters. Results: The following table displays the mean ± SEM values that were obtained using a custom Labview program based on Labview Vision Assistant and Image Pro Capture Software: Discussion: As the data indicates, there is insignificant variation between the control nerves and implanted nerves' morphometric parameters. In contrast, the observations made in previous studies has indicated that the foreign body response from synthetic materials induced changes in many of these same morpho-metric parameters. Therefore our results suggest that the use of ECM cuffs may be a viable alternative as to currently used synthetic nerve cuffs. ECM MATERIALS AS PERIPHERAL NERVE CUFFS Nosheen Khan (Patrick Tresco) Department of Bioengineering University of Utah UNDERGRADUATE RESEARCH ABSTRACTS Patrick Tresco |