| Summary: | 博士 === 國立臺灣大學 === 生物科技研究所 === 106 === In the field of sports medicine, ligament injuries are usually players’ worst nightmare as they can often be career killers. Particularly in baseball, repetition of the throwing motion can cause ligament tears in the elbows for pitchers. Famous Taiwanese pitchers such as Hong-Chi Kuo and Wei-Yin Chen, both played in MLB, had respectively underwent surgeries and platelet-rich plasma injection due to their elbow ligament injuries. Still, the best treatment approach will depend on individual players’ specific ligament injuries and the development of regenerative medicine.
When treating patients with lateral ulnar collateral ligament tear, it is instrumental for a hand surgeon to understand the important of seeking post-op treatment to compliment the limitations of surgeries. Clinical statistics show that patients with stage I or stage II ligament injuries have better prognosis after surgeries while patients having stage III injuries with medial collateral ligament tears benefit less from surgical treatments. Moreover, all patients who underwent surgeries exhibit stiffness and limited mobility in the elbow joints. This indicates that the surgical approach has yet to resolve all complications at the moment. As such, the clinical study aims to compare the surgical results of ligament injuries caused by posterolateral rotatory instability of the elbow, observe patients’ post-op prognosis and complications, and then explore the possibility of stem-cell treatment.
As the multipotent potential of amniotic fluid-derived progenitor cells (AFPCs) has been proven, we used the red fluorescent protein (Ds-red)-expressing transgenic pigs and enhanced green fluorescent protein (EGFP)-labeled transgenic mice bred in our lab to produce AFPCs for tracing and tracking purpose in the pilot studies. Because most of the fluorescent signals were detected in the intestinal tract in intrauterine injections of AFPCs from EGFP transgenic mice in past studies, we use amniotic fluid stem cells (pAFSCs) from DsRed transgenic pigs to treat mice with intestinal injuries.
After one week of intraperitoneal injection of pAFSCs, we found that the injured intestines had been increased in length, some damages of the intestinal villi and intestinal walls had been repaired, and inflammation had been alleviated, which can all be contributory in improving the intestinal functions of the mice. Therefore, pAFSCs have the ability to move and repair intestinal tissues.
The study aims to find the best practice to produce pAFSCs and to observe their abilities to repair damaged soft intestinal tissues in mice, all in the hopes of applying the findings to the clinical treatment of ligament and soft tissue injuries, to improve players’ health and extend the life of their sports careers, and to bring about breakthroughs in the treatments of sports medicine.
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