Vitro Diagnostics Inc. (fka VODG)

[Potse]

VODG is developing a wound healing product.....

According to Tuesday's (1/29/2013) blog post on the Vitro Biopharma website, the company is developing a wound healing product using mesenchymal stem cells.....

Enhanced Wound Healing by MSCs

Mesenchymal stem cells (MSCs) have strong tissue regenerative, wound repair and immunomodulatory effects, making cell therapy with MSCs a promising approach to various applications in the field of regenerative medicine. While limited clinical trials have been held in the field of healing wounds with MSCs, recent animal studies show quicker tissue regeneration and tissue repair in wounds.

Wound healing includes three phases: inflammatory, proliferative, and remodeling. MSCs have been found to be involved in all three phases of wound healing. MSCs have a strong anti-inflammatory response by decreasing secretion of pro-inflammatory cytokines (tumor necrosis factor-a and interferon-?) while also increasing the production of anti-inflammatory cytokines (prostaglandin E2) (Maxson et al., 2012). By decreasing the inflammatory phase of wound healing, MSCs can restart healing in chronic wounds by advancing to the next stage of healing. In the proliferative phase of wound healing, MSCs’ antimicrobial activity is crucial for avoidance of infection. MSCs use paracrine signaling to secrete growth factors (vascular endothelial growth factor and hepatocyte growth factor) to help avoid scarring of the skin tissue during the remodeling phase.

A promising study has recently been published on the effects of MSCs in chronic wound healing. A group of normal and diabetic mice were given two different dermal abrasions. Mice given MSC grafts showed faster healing than those without the graft. While the diabetic mice still healed slower than the healthy ones, MSCs increased the rate of wound healing. Also, the wound that was not treated with MSCs showed an indirect effect of MSC exposure that promoted wound healing, thus showing that MSCs recruit existing endogenous tissue cells, possibly MSCs, to enhance wound healing. The grafted MSCs were labeled with a green fluorescent protein; after 10 days of healing time, there was no trace of the green fluorescent cells in the wound or anywhere else in the body (Shin et al., 2012). The accelerated healing persisted even after the disappearance of these fluorescent MSCs, suggesting their role in signaling the recruitment and homing of endogenous cells.

Several other human clinical trials have shown that the administration of MSCs accelerate healing in chronic wounds. In a study of chronic diabetic foot ulcers, the size of the ulcers decreased and dermal thickness improved following the injection of MSCs into the edges of the wounds. Another study involved treating 20 patients with various chronic non-healing wounds with autologous bone marrow derived MSCs. Treatment with a cellular graft, composed of MSCs & fibrin, produced complete healing of 90% of the wounds. (Maxson et al., 2012).

One of the limitations to MSC wound healing therapy is the method of delivering the cells; to administer the cells locally, an appropriate carrier or scaffold is required. Fibrin spray or a fibrin sealant enriched with MSCs is often used. These therapies repair excisional wounds by decreasing the time required for re-epithelialization (Jackson et al., 2011). Further studies are needed to elucidate the interactions between MSCs and immune and wound healing cell types that are present in the wound bed in order to find the most effective mode of delivery and how to utilize these MSCs for wound healing.

Vitro Biopharma is now developing a MSC-based wound healing product and plans animal testing of this product in the near future.

Contributed by Lianne Nelsen, Research Technician at Vitro Biopharma & Chemical Engineering student at the Colorado School of Mines.

http://vitrobiopharma.com/2013/01/29/enhanced-wound-healing-by-mscs/