Fig. 2.

Behavioral recovery with nerve graft implanted into sciatic nerve defect in rats. A Photographs showing the surgery after sciatic nerve defect (15 mm) in rats. An artificial nerve graft (NG) or NG incorporated with SKP-SC-EVs (EV-NG) was implanted into a 15 mm sciatic nerve defect. B Gross view of the regenerated nerve at 12 weeks after implantation in the NG group and EV-NG group. C At 6-, 8-, 10- and 12-weeks post-surgery, the SFI values of rats implanted with NG or EV-NG were measured with CatWalk gait analysis (n = 10 in NG group and n = 7 in EV-NG group). D At 6-, 8-, 10- and 12-postoperative weeks, the withdrawal time in response to thermal stimulation in each group was detected by the plantar test (n = 10 in each group and 3 times were performed with an interval of 10 min for each animal). All data are presented as mean ± SEM. ∗ p < 0.05 with unpaired Student’s t-test (two-sided). E Confocal microscopy photographs showing the uptake of PKH26-labeled SKP-SC-EVs (red) by SCs (green, S100 positive) in the proximal (pro) and distal (dis) nerve stumps at 1 d and 4 d post-surgery. The nucleus was stained with DAPI. Scale bar = 50 μm