by Jeffrey C. Marx, PhD
Volume 1, Issue 1 (March 2002)
In orthopedic procedures, there is a need to form new bone to repair and fill defects arising from either trauma or degenerative disease. The current standard treatment utilizes an autograft, usually from the iliac crest, which results in a second surgical site, weakness in the harvest or donor harvest area, and additional patient morbidity. The goal of our research is to employ a local, ex vivo, gene therapy to obviate the need for autograft in spine fusion procedures. The LIM Mineralization Protein (LMP-1) is a novel intracellular protein capable of inducing bone formation in vitro and in vivo. In this article, I will outline a rapid protocol, whereby buffy coat cells, isolated from autologous peripheral blood, are transduced with an adenoviral vector encoding the LMP-1 gene. These transduced cells are then implanted on a collagen carrier to promote posterolateral arthodesis…
Citation:
Marx JC. Local Gene Therapy for Lumbar Spine Fusion. BioProcess J, 2002; 1(1): 49-54.