Researchers grow new muscle in men's injured legs
Published 7:59 pm, Wednesday, April 30, 2014
Scientists implanted thin sheets of scaffolding-like material from pigs into a few young men with disabling leg injuries - and say the experimental treatment coaxed the men's own stem cells to regrow new muscle.
The research, funded by the Defense Department, included just five patients, a small first step in the complex quest for regenerative medicine.
But the researchers described some of the men improving enough to no longer need canes, or to ride a bicycle again, after years of living with injuries that today have no good treatment.
"The real rush for someone like myself is to see this patient being able to do these things and not struggle and have a smile on his face," said Dr. Stephen Badylak of the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine. He led the study, which was reported Wednesday in the journal Science Translational Medicine.
Muscles have some natural ability to regenerate after small injuries. But if too much is lost - from a car accident, a sports injury or, for soldiers, a bomb blast - the body can't heal properly. Hard scar tissue fills the gap instead. Called volumetric muscle loss, a severe enough injury can leave an arm or leg essentially useless.
The new experiment combines bioengineering with a heavy dose of physical therapy to spur stem cells that are roaming the body to settle on the injury and turn into the right kind of tissue to repair it.
First, surgeons remove the scar tissue.
Then they implant something called an "extracellular matrix" derived from pigs. It's the connective scaffolding that remains after cells are removed from a tissue. (Without cells, the immune system doesn't reject it.) Such material has been used for many years as a kind of mesh in treatments for skin ulcers and in hernia repair.
What's new here: The matrix temporarily fills in the injury, between edges of remaining muscle. As the scaffolding slowly degrades, it releases chemical signals that attract stem cells to the site, Badylak said.