Effect of Immunocompromising Therapy on In Vivo Cell Survival in Musculoskeletal Tissue Engineering

Replacing soft tissue after trauma or tumor surgery remains a major challenge in reconstructive surgery. A promising alternative is the possibility of using bioartificial musculoskeletal tissue created out of primary muscle cells. However, poor survival of transplanted cells and suboptimal matrix qualities limit the development of bioartificial tissues (BATs). Furthermore, granulocyte infiltration into BATs also appears to impair cell survival. Therefore, this study investigates how immunocompromising therapy affects the survival of transplanted myoblasts in a three-dimensional vascularized BAT. Myoblasts (4 × 106) were transfected with a luciferase-reporter sequence and then transplanted into an in vivo bioreactor placed within the abdominal wall of Wistar rats. Bioluminescence was used to monitor the myoblasts in vivo. The rats were either not treated (group 1, control) or subjected to immunocompromising therapy that involved daily administration of cyclosporine A (group 2), prednisolone (group 3), or both (group 4). Bioluminescence monitoring showed that luminescence signals on day 7 were significantly higher in all immunocompromised animals than those in the animals in the control group (group 2: p