Cell Transplantation and “Stem Cell Therapy” in the Treatment of Myopathies: Many Promises in Mice, Few Realities in Humans
Figure 7
Expansion of the myoblast engraftment in nonhuman primates after skeletal muscle electroporation. The figure shows transversal sections of muscle biopsies taken 1 month after intramuscular transplantation of β-galactosidase-labeled myoblasts in skeletal muscles of macaques. The sections correspond to sites in which isolated injections of myoblasts were done, perpendicular to the myofibers and delivering 25 μl of cell suspension during the needle withdrawal. They are stained for β-galactosidase detection (greenish-blue precipitate). The red arrows indicate the direction of the original needle penetration during transplantation. In one case, the injection was done in a skeletal muscle that was not pretreated (control), and in the other, the cell injection was done in a site submitted to electroporation (3 pulses of 400 V/cm, duration of 5 ms and delay of 200 ms). β-galactosidase+ myofibers are disposed as a thin and discontinuous band corresponding to the injection trajectory in the control site, while the engraftment is quite large in the electroporated site, showing that the grafted myoblasts have fused abundantly with myofibers out of the injection trajectories. Scale bars = 0.5 mm.
