Please read Dr. Grasman’s article in the Journal of Functional Biomaterials titled, “Aligned Collagen Sponges with Tunable Pore Size for Skeletal Muscle Tissue Regeneration.“
Volumetric muscle loss (VML) is a condition in which skeletal muscle mass is lost due to a traumatic event, which results in permanent functional impairment of the muscle. These injuries may be caused by traumatic events such as sports injuries, surgical procedures, automobile accidents, or combat wounds. Studies that evaluated thousands of battlefield injuries involving US and UK service members who had been injured and evacuated between 2001 and 2014 showed that over 75% of these service members sustained musculoskeletal injuries, and VML was implicated in almost all of these cases. The current standard of treatment for VML is an autologous tissue graft, where a separate, healthy muscle from the patient is removed and implanted into the injury site. This treatment not only involves two surgeries (e.g., tissue harvest and tissue integration into the injured location), but is limited by donor site morbidity, formation of scar tissue, and lack of functional recovery. Therefore, there is a clear need to develop alternative approaches to the treatment of VML. To read the full article.
Aligned Collagen Sponges with Tunable Pore Size for Skeletal Muscle Tissue Regeneration. Kozan NG, Caswell S, Patel M, Grasman JM. Funct. Biomater. 2023 14(11), 533; DOI: 10.3390/jfb14110533