Evaluation of bone marrow mononuclear cells as an adjunct therapy to minced muscle graft for the treatment of volumetric muscle loss injuries

Background: The delivery of alternative myogenic cell sources to enhance the efficacy of minced muscle grafts (MG) for the treatment of volumetric muscle loss (VML) injuries is a promising strategy to overcome the demand on muscle-derived donor tissue that currently limits the translation of this therapy. Methods: Using a rat model of VML, bone marrow mononuclear cells (BMNCs) were evaluated for their ability to directly contribute to de novo muscle fiber regeneration by transplanting MG in a collagen carrier at a dose of 50% of the VML injury both with and without concomitant delivery of 5 million BMNCs derived via density gradient centrifugation from the bone marrow of a syngeneic green fluorescent protein (GFP)⁺ donor. Results: Histological, molecular, and functional analyses revealed that BMNCs can engraft with co-delivered MG and contribute to nascent myofiber, but do so at a low magnitude without resulting in significant changes to transcription of key myogenic genes or gains in whole muscle force generation relative to MG alone. Conclusion: As such, co-delivery of BMNCs with MG is a promising treatment paradigm to VML that will require further investigation to identify the phenotype and therapeutic dosing of the bone marrow-derived cell populations which engraft most efficiently.