Johns Hopkins biomedical engineering students recently won first place in the University’s Design Day 2009 competition for demonstrating a practical way to embed a patient’s own adult stem cells in sutures. A suture (for example Ethicon suture, Covidien suture, or Autosuture), is the surgical thread used for wound closure by physicians. Suture needles are used to stitch sutures into the tissue.
This particular application of embedding adult stem cells into surgical thread was developed for the repair of serious orthopedic injuries such as ruptured tendons. The objective of utilizing this technology is to enhance the healing process by reducing inflammation and speed up healing by releasing growth factor proteins. The possibility of re-injury would also be reduced. Since the cells will come from the patient, rejection should not be an issue. So far preliminary test results are promising-indications show that the cells attached to the sutures survive the wound closure process and keep the ability to become replacement tissue such as cartilage.
The project involved several steps. Bioactive Surgical was the corporate sponsor who developed the patent-pending concept for embedding cells in sutures and procured the student team to do the testing. First, the student team had to locate a machine that could produce sutures capable of ensuring the viability of the cells and effectively deliver them into the tissue. The undergraduate students, in collaboration with orthopedic physicians, then began testing the stem cell sutures in animal models in the hopes that the stem cells would considerably speed up and improve the healing process. The students also handled aspects such as preparing grant applications to seek additional funding.
Ultimately the procedure would be as follows: the physician would procure stem cells from the bone marrow in a patient’s hip, embed the stem cells into the novel suture through a proprietary process, and then stitch together the orthopedic injury in the normal way with suture needles using the specially prepared sutures.
Currently, tendon repair surgery is done with conventional sutures including such brands as Ethicon suture, Covidien suture, Autosuture or with an Ethicon wound closure product.