Comparing adipose derived stem cells in fibrin conduit for peripheral nerve repair to standard therapy: an experimental study

• Grant number: 13/10380-5
• Support Opportunities: Regular Research Grants
• Start date: December 01, 2013
• End date: November 30, 2015
• Field of knowledge: Health Sciences - Medicine
• Principal Investigator: José Carlos Marques de Faria
• Grantee: José Carlos Marques de Faria
• Host Institution: Faculdade de Medicina (FM). Universidade de São Paulo (USP). São Paulo , SP, Brazil
• Associated researchers: Cesar Isaac ; Marco Vinicius Losso Longo

Abstract

Peripheral nerves are responsible for the interaction between central nervous system and extremities. They can be damaged by trauma, by tumor invasion, by surgical resection, and these injuries causes deficiencies in target organs. The treatment of peripheral nerve injuries is still a challenge for medicine. The standard treatment for nerve defects that can not be primarily sutured is nerve autograft. But this technique lacks satisfactory results and causes morbidity in the donor area. Several options have been studied as alternatives to nerve graft including: vein graft, allogenic graft and alloplastic conduits. The use of stem cells to nerve regeneration is the newest technique for reconstruction of peripheral nerves, and shows promising results in the literature. Several studies have shown that the use of stem cells derived from adipose tissue (ADSC) in alloplastic conduits present encouraging results on neural regeneration. There are not studies that compare addition of ADSC in alloplastic conduits with current standard treatment - autologous nerve graft.This study aims to compare nerve regeneration in rat sciatic nerve. There will be evaluated fibrin conduit, fibrin conduit with added ADSC and autologous nerve graft (standard treatment). Functional recovery will be measured by the method "walking track analysis" and histological regeneration by optical microscopy. (AU)