Regenerative strategies applied to Veterinary Medicine.

Regenerative veterinary medicine is recently using tissue engineering techniques and cell-based therapies for the treatment of acute and chronic pathologies. Our group studies frequently occurring conditions as tendon’s traumatic rupture and tendinopathies attempting to improve the “intrinsic” tendon healing. For example, injection of mesenchymal stromal cells (MSC) and/or platelet rich plasma (PRP) into the core of a damaged tendon aims to take maximal advantage of reparative mechanisms that occur naturally in the animal body. In this report it is summarized the most significant results and future strategies of our research emphasising the fact that MSC obtained from different sources are safe and have the potential to enhance functional recovery in equine injuries. However, it will be necessary to increase the number of clinical and experimental cases in a long-term follow-up period (this would be necessary also for PRP studies) for evaluating the re-injury percentages and analyse the histological and molecular parameters of the healed tissues.