Newswise — A breakthrough by Israeli researchers could speed recovery and limit scarring and disfigurement for patients who have suffered large soft tissue trauma – as often occurs with serious injury or cancer surgery.  By biomedically engineering a muscle flap that includes a patient’s own blood vessels, the team has created tissue that could be transferred to other parts of the body along with the patient’s blood supply. Current techniques for reconstructing such trauma - including grafts and synthetic material - often fail because of lost blood supply.


Led by Professor Shulamit Levenberg, of the Department of Biomedical Engineering and the Russell Berrie Nanotechnology Institute at the Technion-Israel Institute of Technology (http://www.technion.ac.il/en), the scientists fabricated the muscle flap using a variety of added cells and connective tissues to strengthen it. They then tested the flap by reconstructing deep abdominal wall tissue defects in mice.

Their paper describing how the muscle flap was engineered, its advantages, and its successful use when tested in an animal model, appears this week in the Online Early Edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences ([ http://www.pnas.org ]www.pnas.org).

According to Levenberg, successful reconstruction of large, soft tissue defects has been a clinical challenge in the past.

To improve outcomes, the researchers developed the unique muscle flap using a patient's own tissues (autologous), added important and advantageous cellular components to strengthen it, and engineered the flap in such a way as to vascularize to include the patient's own blood vessels so that the patient retains their own blood supply during the reconstruction process.

“We set out to design and evaluate an engineered muscle flap with robust vascularization,” says Levenberg, whose research focuses on vascularization of engineered tissues. “Proper vascularization is essential for successfully integrating the flap within the host.”

Their study, said the researchers, provides evidence that tissue-specific cells, such as myoblasts (cells that form muscles), endothelial cells (the thin layer of cells that lines the interior surface of blood vessels), and fibroblasts (the cells providing the structural framework for animal tissues), are necessary for successful muscle flap engineering as the added cells “rapidly and more effectively integrated within the host tissue.”

“The cell types integrated in the engineered flaps dictate the muscle flap's mechanical strength,” adds Levenberg.

The researchers report that within one week of transferring the engineered muscle flaps into the test mice the flaps were “viable, highly vascularized,” and demonstrated “firm attachment to the surrounding tissues.” They also note that the muscle flaps had the mechanical strength to support the “abdominal viscera,” or organs in the abdominal region.

Their positive results, say the researchers, will not only stimulate more research, but also lead to clinical studies with human patients. They also suggest that there are far-reaching uses of the muscle flap as it can be transferred as a "free flap" to reconstruct defects in other parts of the body. This advantage could circumvent the need to harvest and transfer large amounts of tissue, avoiding many of the current complications.

“When the flap is made with a viable blood vessel network, larger quantities of tissue, even a whole organ, can be implanted and then coupled to the main vessel trunk by attaching the blood vessel network of the engineered tissue to host vessels,” conclude the researchers.

The study was performed in collaboration with Dr. Yulia Shandalov (who was a doctoral student under Professor Levenberg at the time of the study), and Dr. Dana Egozi, from the Department of Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery at the Rambam Health Care Campus. It is part of a research project led by Prof. Shulamit Levenberg, funded by the European Research Council (ERC).

The Technion-Israel Institute of Technology is a major source of the innovation and brainpower that drives the Israeli economy, and a key to Israeli's renown as the world's “Start-Up Nation.” Its three Nobel Prize winners exemplify academic excellence. Technion people, ideas and inventions make immeasurable contributions to the world including life-saving medicine, sustainable energy, computer science, water conservation and nanotechnology. The Joan and Irwin Jacobs Technion-Cornell Innovation Institute is a vital component of Cornell NYC Tech, and a model for graduate applied science education that is expected to transform New York City's economy.American Technion Society (http://www.ats.org) donors provide critical support for the Technion - more than $1.9 billion since its inception in 1940. Based in New York City, the ATS and its network of chapters across the U.S. provide funds for scholarships, fellowships, faculty recruitment and chairs, research, buildings, laboratories, classrooms and dormitories, and more.

Journal Link: PNAS Online Early Edition