Treating Equine Orthopedic Injuries with Stem Cells

Thehorse.com - full article

by: Erica Larson, News Editor
July 17 2011, Article # 18536

When it comes to treatment options for orthopedic injuries, some horse owners jump at the chance to give a new one a try. One such treatment option that has many owners excited is stem cell therapy. At the at the 2011 North American Veterinary Regenerative Medicine Conference held June 2-4 in Lexington, Ky., Larry Galuppo, DVM, Dipl. ACVS, professor and chief of equine surgery at the University of California (UC), Davis, William R. Pritchard Veterinary Medical Teaching Hospital, explained to horse owners how stem cells are currently being used to treat orthopedic injuries in horses, and how the cells might be used in the future.

The Basics

Galuppo began his presentation with a brief overview of how stem cells are collected and where they're harvested from:

* Bone marrow-derived stem cells (collected from the sternum or the hip);
* Adipose-derived stem cells (collected via an incision near the horse's tailhead); and
* Maternally-derived stem cells (collected from the umbilical cord blood and tissue).

Once the stem cells have been harvested, the aspirate (stem cells that have been collected) is proliferated until there are enough cells for a treatment (although there is not yet a hard and fast rule as to how many cells to use per treatment, many veterinarians use upwards of 10 million cells per injection), and the cells are either frozen and stored for future use or injected directly into the injured horse...

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