Artikel
Mesenchymal stromal cells improve the wound healing potential of surgical sutures
Suche in Medline nach
Autoren
Veröffentlicht: | 26. April 2013 |
---|
Gliederung
Text
Introduction: Delayed wound healing and scar formation are among the most frequent complications after surgical interventions. Besides esthetic impairments, patients suffer loss of tissue functionality. Although biodegradable surgical sutures present an excellent opportunity to locally deliver bioactive molecules, their primary function is mechanical tissue fixation. Here we present a strategy to bioactivate surgical sutures by seeding of mesenchymal stromal cells (MSC), which play a crucial role in wound healing acting as trophic mediators.
Material and methods: MSCs were isolated from human fat tissue and further characterized. Afterwards sutures were seeded with cells and their distribution and viability was analyzed. Further the potential to secrete paracrine factors was tested and their bioactivity was confirmed in vitro.
Results: Histological analysis showed that MSCs attached to the suture material and distributed homogeneously throughout the woven suture material. MTT assay showed that seeded cells survive in the suture and showed a significant increase of metabolic activity after 7 days, suggesting cell proliferation. The analysis of conditioned media showed that seeded sutures released several cytokines that are related to tissue remodeling, immunomodulation and angiogenesis. After characterizing the bioactive sutures in vitro, we were able to show that cells remain in the suture and stay metabolically active after suturing in an ex vivo human wound model.
Conclusion: MSC-seeded sutures represent a promising approach to promote wound healing and decrease scar formation. Further experiments are under investigation to evaluate their effects in vivo.