Bone-marrow-derived MSCs can promote fracture healing

Mesenchymal stem cells (MSCs) have been transplanted to successfully treat a variety of diseases and conditions. The benefit of using MSCs is their ability to self-renew and differentiate into a variety of specialized cell types, such as osteoblasts (cells contributing to bone formation), chondrocytes (cartilage cells), adipocytes (fat cells), myocardiocytes (the muscle cells that make up the cardiac muscle), and neurons (nervous system cells).

MSCs have shown the ability to modulate the immune response and therefore reduce local inflammation. They can be isolated from a variety of sources, such as adipose (fat) tissues, tendons, peripheral blood, umbilical cord blood and bone marrow. MSCs derived from bone marrow have been among the most successfully transplanted cells, offering therapeutic benefits.

Bone marrow was used as a source for MSCs in three different animal models of disease studies in which MSC transplantation was performed as detailed below and they will be published in future issues of Cell Transplantation.

MSCs promote fracture healing in rats Researchers in Hong Kong, China, who hypothesized that systemic and localized administration of bone-marrow-derived MSCs could promote fracture healing, assigned 48 adult male rats modeled with femoral fractures to four treatment groups. Two groups received MSCs, with one administered systemically and a second locally, four days after the rats were modeled with femoral fractures. The other two rat groups did not receive MSCs.

Five weeks after fracture modeling, it was found that the two groups receiving MSCs, either systemically or locally, had fracture gaps united while fracture gaps were still present in the two groups that did not receive MSCs. Both the locally injected and systemic injected groups demonstrated similar and indistinguishable fracture uniting patterns. However, the presence of generated osteoblasts in the systemically administered group was higher than in the locally injected group. "These findings provide critical insight for developing MSC-based therapies as systemic injection of allogeneic (other donated) MSCs may be a novel treatment method for promoting fracture repair," concluded the researchers.

Source: Cell Transplantation Center of Excellence for Aging and Brain Repair