A Novel Ex Vivo Energy-Enhanced Hypothermic Preservation of Skin-Containing Composite Tissues
Abstract
Disfiguring face injuries and amputations are common among military Soldiers and may also affect civilians. As of January 2007, Service members treated at U.S. facilities suffered 37,523 discrete face and neck injuries, with 25,834 soft tissue injuries and 11,689 involved fractures to the face bones, as well as 541 major limb amputations. Traditional reconstructive surgical procedures to repair these devastating injuries are not possible, particularly when the injury is associated with significant loss of compound tissue containing skin, muscle, bone, and nerve. Alternatively, transplant surgery for the face, hand, or limb has emerged as a promising treatment for disfiguring injuries. This surgical treatment has the advantage of potentially restoring appearance, as well as the function, of these so-called compound body parts when successfully transplanted into the recipients. At this time, more than 100 upper-limb transplants and some 30 face transplants have been performed around the world. None of these transplants have benefited a Service member. A major reason for the lack of widespread use of this transplant treatment relates to the deficiency and the bad quality of the available compound body parts at the time of transplantation. Compound body parts are usually procured from a deceased donor and require cold storage for variable times before use. These steps cause damage and alter the quality of the compound body parts. Existing cold storage techniques of compound body parts are the only adjustable procedures that can be altered to serve to minimize damage and maintain viability of the compound body part. In this research project, we will study the effectiveness of a new method that relies on cold storage in minimizing damage and in maintaining the quality of rear legs from rats during simple cold storage. The objective of this research is to maintain good quality of the rear legs after 24 hours in cold storage. This is consistent and in accordance with U.S. Army demands to focus the research area on developing a new and advanced tissue storage strategy to increase the time between compound tissue collection and transplantation. We will achieve this objective by using a new transport agent loaded with natural energy particles. This transport agent can restore the vacant energy particles in the rear legs during the cold storage time as a widely reported incident. The safety of the transport agent containing the energy particles has already been verified and approved for human use. However, we expect to test this new product and method in large animals before using them in humans, as required by the governing bodies. This will take 2 years before we achieve a patient-related outcome. We do not foresee any risks from the use of this energy-restoring transport agent in compound tissue and organ storage protocols. Also, we demonstrated benefits from the use of the energy-restoring transport agents in the treatment of massive blood loss due to trauma, in wound healing, and even for stimulating hair growth by local application. Successful completion of this project will set new standards for cold storage and create a new standard in transplantation in general and compound body part transplants in particular. Currently, compound body parts have the lowest safe time for cold storage when compared with other organs like the kidney, liver, and heart. Increasing the safe cold storage times for compound tissue and organs will benefit transplantation in many ways, including the following: 1. The availability of good quality compound tissues will allow caregivers and surgeons to offer compound tissue transplantation to military Service members as alternative to synthetic body parts or the lengthy and multistep attempts of reconstructive surgery. This will remarkably decrease the burden of disfiguring injuries on military Service members and their families. 2. As the outcome of compound body part tr
Document Details
- Document Type
- DoD Grant Award
- Publication Date
- Oct 29, 2018
- Source ID
- W81XWH1810517
Entities
People
- El Rasheid Zakaria
Organizations
- United States Army
- University of Arizona