Regenerative medicine company Orthocell (ASX:OCC) has announced positive pre-clinical results for the use of CelGro in enhancing repair of severed peripheral nerves.
The company said the new results provide evidence of CelGro restoring nerves to their normal or pre-injured structure, which is not possible to be examined as part of the current human nerve regeneration trial.
According to managing director Paul Anderson, “We are thrilled with the animal study results, indicating CelGro facilitates high quality nerve repair. The results reinforce the initial patient outcomes previously reported from our current human clinical study demonstrating return of sensation and muscle function in affected limbs following CelGro nerve regeneration treatment. Restoring normal nerve structure is critical for regaining mobility, function and quality of life.”
Repair of damaged peripheral nerves often involves reconstructive surgery and the use of sutures or stitches to reconnect the nerve ends. The company said this traditional method has shown to result in suboptimal sensory and functional patient outcomes.
"Sutures are unable to seal the nerve, thus incapable of preventing leakage of important intraneural fluids from the regenerating nerve. Furthermore, nerve suturing is technically demanding to apply for direct repairs and often induce detrimental scarring that impedes healing and functional recovery," it said.
In this pre-clinical study, the use of CelGro for peripheral nerve repair in rats was shown to induce a complete regeneration of nerve fibres which were indistinguishable from normal nerve histology.