Repair of Traumatized Muscle Tissue for Improvement of Musculoskeletal Healing

We are pursuing how skeletal muscle autografting improves muscle function and bone healing in a swine model of a segmental bone defect. Minipigs have been subjected to a 25mm diaphyseal bone defect in the mid-tibia stabilized with double plating and a customized scaffold. Experimental animals have an adjacent 7.0 g muscle defect. Functional muscle testing is performed monthly until sacrifice with a customized testing machine. We have had a reaction to our scaffold resulting in nonunions in the control animals. We are repeating the control animals with the isolated bone defect by eliminating the scaffold. The experimental design will continue once the control group has been successfully re-established.