Humans can have a lot in common with their animal companions, and in the case of horses, even similar injuries and rehabilitation.

Lauren Schnabel, an assistant professor and equine orthopedic surgeon, works on research involving regenerative therapies for treating musculoskeletal disorders in horses. In particular, mesenchyme stem cells (MSCs) are being investigated as a therapy.

The main focus of the lab is investigating regenerative therapies or biologic therapies for treating musculoskeletal injuries, and a main interest that we focus on is really tendon injuries, Schnabel said. That also includes ligament and other joint problems.

A goal of the lab is to develop therapies that benefit horses, especially high-level athletic horses, according to Schnabel. Still, the lab wants to make sure that a pet horse is just as comfortable if its suffering from an injury.

Horse injuries like meniscal and tendon injuries are similar in humans, so the horses in the research can possibly be used as a model for human treatments.

With that angle from the horse as an athlete, the other main focus of the lab is really using the horse as a translational model for human health, Schnabel said.

Horses serve as a great orthopedic model for humans, according to Schnabel. They go through a lot of the same surgeries and rehabilitation protocols as humans do.

For horses, most of the research is currently concentrated on improving treatments for musculoskeletal diseases, like tendonitis and osteoarthritis, said Alix Berglund, a graduate research assistant working with Schnabel. Musculoskeletal diseases are also an important issue in human medicine, especially in athletes.

As part of the veterinary medicine field, the lab has an advantage of trying a lot more regenerative therapies that include the use of stem cells, according to Schnabel. Stem cell therapies for treating horse injuries are still being refined and researched by the lab.

Usually, the way we get stem cells from a horse is from their bone marrow in their sternum and then you have to grow the cells for a couple of weeks, so its usually like two to three weeks, Schnabel said.

Stem cells that are off the shelf would be ideal in treating horses.

One of the long-term-goals of our lab is to develop ways to use MSCs in an off-the-shelf manner, Berglund said. This means that a horse could receive MSCs from a donor at the time of injury or diagnosis of disease instead of waiting weeks until their own cells can be cultured and expanded for use.

It was initially thought that stem cells wouldnt cause an immune reaction due to how they deregulate immune responses, according to Schnabel. If stem cells from one horse are given to a mismatched horse, then the cells are recognized by the immune system and are targeted for death. This is why the horses used in the lab are immune haplotypes, meaning they can have matched or mismatched stem cell treatments.

If theyre getting targeted for death quickly, then theyre probably not going to be as effective. We spent a lot of time showing that was true, because thats been debated in the literature for a long time, Schnabel said. Then now were trying to control the immunogenicity of the stem cells so that we could use them in an off-the-shelf way.

Tendon injuries generally heal slowly and have scar tissue, and the re-injury rate is high in both horses and humans. Horses, especially racehorses, injure their superficial digital flexor tendons and when they do that, they have a 60 to 70 percent chance of reinjuring that same tendon, according to Schnabel.

Its devastating for any horse, especially an athlete. A racehorse has from [age] two to five to compete. Its super limited time and three years old is the big year, four year old sort of, and two years old is when theyre prepping, Schnabel said. It roughly takes about six months to 12 months for a tendon injury to heal. That almost completely takes them out of being a successful racehorse, and you can imagine if they get through that, they run one or two races and they re-injure the same tendon, then it's really devastating and the same for [event] horses.

The research team continues to investigate how to make tendon injuries heal with normal tissue and with good fiber alignment to prevent re-injury. While humans and horses share similar experiences with injuries, the future could hold shared treatments that also benefit both.

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NC State professor researches regenerative therapies for horses - N.C. State University Technician Online