Main Category: Dermatology
Also Included In: Seniors / Aging; Stem Cell Research; Genetics
Article Date: 11 Oct 2013 – 1:00 PDT
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Notably, MSCs are not recognized by the body as foreign, making them less likely to trigger an immune system response or attack. Instead, these stem cells appear to secrete proteins that suppress the immune system in specific ways. Pang says it is those properties researchers hope to harness and use to not only regenerate nerve cells, but also to help transplant patients avoid immunosuppressant drugs.
Harmon and his colleagues first attempted to boost the healing process in mice with burn wounds by increasing levels of HIF-1 using gene therapy, a process that included injecting the rodents with a better working copy of the gene that codes for the protein. That had worked to improve healing of wounds in diabetic animals, but the burn wound is particularly difficult to heal, and that approach was insufficient. So they supplemented the gene therapy by removing bone marrow from a young mouse and growing out the needed stem cells in the lab. When they had enough, they injected those supercharged cells back into the mice.
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After 17 days, there were significantly more mice with completely healed burns in the group treated with the combination therapy than in the other groups, Harmon says. The animals that got the combination therapy also showed better blood flow and more blood vessels supplying the wounds.
Johns Hopkins researchers from the Department of Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery report that a type of stem cell found easily in fat cells and also in bone marrow promoted nerve regeneration in rats with paralyzing leg injuries and in some of the rodents that received hind-leg transplants.
MSCs most frequently become bone, cartilage and fat in the bodies of mammals, and researchers have been able to coax them in test tubes into becoming nerve cells and skin that lines blood vessels and tissue.
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Improved wound healing with gene and stem cell therapy combination
After 16 weeks, the researchers say the rats with severed and repaired nerves treated with MSCs showed significant improvements in nerve regrowth and nerve signaling. Those with transplants from similar rats appeared to also show benefit. The rats whose transplants came from dissimilar rodent types – the situation most similar to a human transplant from a cadaver – rejected their new limbs.
Johns Hopkins Medicine
“It’s not a stretch of the imagination to think this could someday be used in elderly people with burns or other difficult wounds,” Harmon says.
“Mesenchymal stem cells may be a promising add-on therapy to help damaged nerves regenerate,” says John Pang, a medical student at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, who was due to present the findings. “We obviously need to learn much more, but we are encouraged by what we learned from these experiments.”
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The findings mark a step forward in understanding how mesenchymal stem cells (MSCs) may improve nerve regeneration after injury and limb transplant, while potentially minimizing the need for lifelong immunosuppression after reconstructive surgery to replace a lost limb, say study leaders W.P. Andrew Lee, M.D., and Gerald Brandacher, M.D. Such immunosuppressive drug therapy carries many unwanted side effects.
MLA
Harmon says a wound treatment like this that uses a patient’s own cells is promising because the patient would be less likely to reject them as they would cells from someone else. Meanwhile, he says, HIF-1 gene therapy has been safely used in humans with sudden lack of blood flow to a limb.
“As we get older, it is harder for our wounds to heal,” says John W. Harmon, M.D., a professor of surgery at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, who presented his findings to the American College of Surgeons’ Surgical Biology Club on Sunday at 9 a.m. “Our research suggests there may be a way to remedy that.”
Researchers look for ways to reduce need for immunosuppressant therapy after limb transplants
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