Sciatic nerve regeneration after traumatic injury using magnetic targeted adipose-derived mesenchymal stem cells

PAULA A. SOTO; MARIANELA VENCE; GONZALO PIÑERO; DIEGO CORAL; VANINA USACH; DIEGO MURACA; ALICIA CUETO; ANNA ROIG; MARCELA B. FERNÁNDEZ VAN RAAP; PATRICIA SETTON-AVRUJ

ACTA BIOMATERIALIA

ELSEVIER SCI LTD

Lugar: Amsterdam; Año: 2021 vol. 130 p. 234 - 247

1742-7061

Traumatic peripheral nerve injuries constitute a huge concern to public health. Nerve damage leads to a decrease or even loss of mobility of the innervated area. Adult stem cell therapies have provided some encouraging outcomes and are identified as promising agents in nerve regeneration. A major bottleneck of that approaches is to secure a sufficient number of cells at the injured site to warrant measurable therapeutic effects. The present work tackles this issue and demonstrates enhanced nerve regeneration ability promoted by magnetic targetted cell therapy in an in vivo Wallerian degeneration model. To this end, adipose-derived mesenchymal stem cells (AdMSC) were loaded with citric acid coated superparamagnetic iron oxide nanoparticles (SPIONs), systemically transplanted and magnetically recruited to the injured sciatic nerve. AdMSC arrival to the injured nerve was significantly stimulated by magnetic targeting and their beneficial effects surpass the regenerative properties of the stand alone cell therapy. AdMSC-SPIONs group shows a partially conserved nerve structure with many intact myelinated axons. Also, a very remarkably restoration in myelin basic protein organization, indicative of remyelination, was observed which brought about a clear improvement in nerve conduction, as a sign of functional recovery. In summary, our results demonstrate that magnetically assisted delivery of AdMSC, using a non-invasive and non-traumatic method, is a highly promising strategy to promote cell recruitment and sciatic nerve regeneration after traumatic injury. Last but not least, our results validate magnetic targeting in vivo exceeding previous reports in less complex models through cell magnetic targeting in vitro and ex vivo.