Repair Of Traumatic Skeletal Muscle Injury With Bone Marrow Derived Cells Seeded On Extracellular Matrix

Surgical repair of a skeletal muscle injury resulting in tissue loss poses unique challenges to the surgeon. Despite the regenerative potential of skeletal muscle, if a significant amount of tissue is lost, skeletal muscle fibers will not grow to fill the injured area completely. Prior work in our lab has shown the potential to fill the void with an extracellular matrix scaffold (ECM), but functional recovery is limited. To improve the functional outcome of the injured muscle, a muscle‐derived ECM seeded with bone marrow derived cells was implanted into a 1 x 1 cm 2 defect in the lateral gastrocnemius (LGAS) of Lewis rats. Without the addition of cells, the ECM repaired LGAS produced 76.4 ± 2.4% of the maximal force of the contralateral LGAS after 42 days of recovery. The LGAS repaired with ECM and cells produced 85.0 ± 4.2% of the contralateral LGAS. The specific tension was 87% and 94% of the contralateral limb for the ECM and ECM with cells groups respectively. The implanted ECM with cells had more blood vessels than the ECM without cells (p < 0.05). The data suggest that the repair of a skeletal muscle defect injury by the implantation of a muscle‐derived ECM seeded with bone‐marrow derived cells can improve the functional outcome after 42 days. This is likely due to an increase in blood vessels and skeletal muscle fibers growing inside the implanted ECM. This work funded in part by the U.S. Army MRMC grant DAMD W81XWH‐06‐1‐0540.