Cell Therapy Assistance in Reconstructive Surgery for Musculoskeletal Tissues Following Burn and Trauma: Swiss Cellular Transplantation Platform

Abstract

Health issues for severe burns and trauma affecting populations from both civilian and military can have many similarities. Much of the medical progress for treatment and surgical care has been documented during times of catastrophic events and war. Death and morbidity of military personnel due to blast and combat-related injuries has declined as a result of improved surgical management, faster transport, and the use of antibiotics. Integration of cellular therapies could aid in repairing damaged tissues more rapidly. As bio-engineered cells and materials would be readily available, they could rapidly be used in the military settings, especially for the treatment of burns and trauma. Cell sources that can be easily expanded and stocked (allogenic sources) would be interesting cell sources to have developed to avoid the biopsy from the patient and the time necessary to prepare the cells before treatment. Cell sources can originate from both animal and human and at all periods of development extending from embryonic to adult. Cell sources can be technically demanding or they can be developed from primary tissue and the resulting cells can remain more similar to their original state. The use of progenitor cells have been developed in a unique Federal Transplantation Program Registration in Switzerland (cell lines have been described and deposited in the European Protection Agency Cell Depository, Porton Down's) should help to advance cellular therapy programs with qualified material that is available when needed for both soft and hard tissues that have been injured. We will give an overview of: i) cell therapies used in military practice to date; ii) Description of cell types and cell choices for regenerative medicine; and iii) The organization of the progenitor cell therapy platform in Switzerland; iv) Pre-requisite recommendations for the future of using cell therapies in world defense and human security.

Banking Progenitor Cells for Hippiatric Regenerative Medicine: Optimized Establishment of Safe and Consistent Cell Sources for Standardized Veterinary Therapeutic Protocols

“…Manufacture of WCBs at defined passages for optimal therapeutic effects allow for generation of off-the-freezer allogeneic material Copy@ Anthony S de Buys Roessingh engineering applications to repair or replace soft tissue, muscle, cartilage, tendon and bone in parallel to human progenitor cells [47,51,54,59,60,65]. Further optimization of cell culture protocols (e.g.…”

“…Cultured primary fetal progenitor cells benefit from considerable industrial and clinical hindsight attesting safety and optimal adequation thereof with technical, economic and regulatory requirements of cell therapy product development. Extensive clinical experience exists in our University Hospital working with viable allogeneic dermal progenitor fibroblasts formulated as Progenitor Biological Bandages (PBBs) for managing burns, donor site grafts and chronic ulcers, yielding unique therapeutic results [41][42][43][44][45][46][47][48][49][50].…”

“…Wound healing rates after progenitor cell applications have been shown to be relatively more important and prompt with little scar tissue formation and an absence of immunogenic or tumorigenic properties has been documented [43,[45][46][47][48]. Generalized and tissue-specific application of progenitor cell technology to musculoskeletal regenerative medicine has effectively been a local driver of translational biomedical research and is currently being evaluated for human and veterinary patients in Switzerland [51][52][53][54][55][56][57][58][59][60][61][62][63][64][65].…”

“…Fetal progenitor cells are tissue-specific and do not require either biochemical manipulation to maintain their respective defined phenotypes nor feeder-layers to sustain in vitro proliferation, allowing for standard optimized cell banking consistency [43,45,53,66]. Extensive proliferation capacities, low immunogenicity and tumorigenicity, high cyto and biocompatibility and excellent stability allow for tangible therapeutic product development based on primary progenitor cell sources [43,[46][47][48][49]. Such an objective is attainable through the establishment of extensive qualified tiered cell banks which can potentially benefit millions of veterinary patients.…”

“…Such an objective is attainable through the establishment of extensive qualified tiered cell banks which can potentially benefit millions of veterinary patients. Indeed, a robust dedicated cell bank derived from a single equine-fetal organ donation fragment (< 1 cm 3 ) potentially yields sufficient progeny materials for industrial scale manufacturing of bioengineered therapeutic constructs (> 10 9 constructs/cell bank) [47].…”