Rebuilding muscle from fascia

We know the unique properties of fascia supporting our body, but now research has shown that fascia canbe used to rebuild human muscle. Sgt. Ron Strang suffered a roadside bomb in Afghanistan that blew off part of his left thigh two years ago. The accident made him wonder if he would ever be able to walk normally again. But now he walks easily, can run on a treadmill. There is something else they would never have guessed: Sergeant Strang has grown new muscle thanks to a thin sheet of fascia from a pig.

The material, called extracellular matrix, is the natural scaffolding that underlies all tissues and organs, in people as well as animals. It is produced by cells, and for years scientists thought that its main role was to hold them in their proper position. Researchers now know that this scaffolding also signals the body to grow and repair those tissues and organs. Armed with that knowledge, the new body builders are using this material from pigs and other animals to engineer the growth of replacement tissue in humans.

Dr. Peter Rubin, a plastic surgeon at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center who is a leader of the study, said that early results with Sergeant Strang and a handful of other patients showed that the animal scaffolding was spurring muscle growth. “We are seeing evidence of remodeling of tissues,” he said.

Last fall, Dr. Rubin cut out the scar tissue from Sergeant Strang’s leg and stitched a sheet resembling a thick piece of parchment paper — extracellular matrix from a pig urinary bladder, which had shown excellent results in lab studies — into the remaining healthy thigh muscle.

His body immediately started breaking down the matrix, which consists largely of collagen and other proteins. But the doctors expected, and wanted, that to happen — by degrading into smaller compounds, the matrix started the signaling process, recruiting stem cells to come to the site where they could become muscle cells.

Read the full story here http://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/17/health/research/human-muscle-regenerated-with-animal-help.html