By Penn Medicine –
The ability of a newly understood stem cell originating in skeletal muscle to turn into bone could hold the key to bone healing after catastrophic fractures.
When bones break and there is extreme tissue loss—such as after a car accident or a battlefield injury—current treatments don’t often lead to effective healing. But certain stem cells from skeletal muscles can improve recovery by producing all the types of cells needed to heal bones, according to a new study co-led by scientists at the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania, published this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
“An approach like this takes the lessons we learned and gives the body the boost it needs to naturally heal itself in a much more efficient and effective way,” said the lead author Ling Qin, PhD, a professor of Orthopaedic Surgery.
