Thus, spontaneous healing of tendon disease is a difficult proposition. These symptoms are attributed to the low healing potential of the rotator cuff tendon due to the avascular and acellular structure, and the tenocytes no longer participate in the regeneration of tendon after injury. After conservative treatments such as rest, non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs, physical therapy, and various kinds of injections, at least 45% patients suffer from persistent symptoms even after 12 months. Rotator cuff disease is a major cause of shoulder pain, and approximately 300,000 operations are performed each year in the USA. Treatment with T-UC MSCs could induce tendon regeneration of FTD at the macroscopic, histological, and biomechanical levels comparable to treatment with C-UC MSCs. The morphology, viability, and proliferation of T-UC MSCs were comparable to those of C-UC MSCs. Moreover, T-UC MSCs remained 8.77% at 4 weeks after injury, and there was no significant difference between C-UC MSCs and T-UC MSCs. All the improved values of T-UC MSCs were comparable to those of C-UC MSCs. Further, the T-UC MSCs showed enhanced ultimate failure load by 1.55- and 1.25-fold compared with the control group at both 2 and 4 weeks. Histologically, the nuclear aspect ratio, orientation angle of fibroblasts, collagen organization, and fiber coherence were improved by 33.33%, 42.75%, 1.86-fold, and 1.99-fold at 4 weeks, and GAG-rich area decreased by 88.13% and 94.70% at 2 and 4 weeks respectively. In animal experiments, compared with the control group, the macroscopic appearance of the T-UC MSCs was more recovered at 2 and 4 weeks such as inflammation, defect size, neighboring tendon, swelling/redness, the connecting surrounding tissue and slidability. T-UC MSCs had fibroblast-like morphology and showed greater than 97% viability and stable proliferation comparable to the C-UC MSCs at passage 10. Differences with p < .05 were considered statistically significant. Two and 4 weeks later, macroscopic, histological, biomechanical, and cell trafficking were evaluated. In animal experiments, we created a FTD in the supraspinatus of rats and injected the injured tendon with saline, cryopreserved agent (CPA control), C-UC MSCs, and T-UC MSCs, respectively. We evaluated morphology, viability, and proliferation of cultured umbilical cord-derived MSCs (C-UC MSCs) and freshly thawed umbilical cord-derived MSCs (T-UC MSCs) at passage 10 in vitro. This study investigated the efficacy of freshly thawed MSCs on the regeneration of a full-thickness tendon defect (FTD) of rotator cuff tendon in a rat model. Thus, the MSCs would be prepared in advanced in cryopreserved condition for an “off-the-shelf” usage in clinic. It is difficult to immediately use mesenchymal stem cells (MSCs) for the patient with rotator cuff disease because isolation and culture time are required.

Fresh download 8.77