VCU news

Michael McClure, Ph.D., has received a $500,000 Defense Medical Research and Development Neuromusculoskeletal Injuries Rehabilitation Research Award through the U.S. Department of Defense to develop a strategy that could allow a patient to regain use of a severely damaged muscle.

McClure, an assistant professor in the Department of Biomedical Engineering in Virginia Commonwealth University’s College of Engineering, is working with Jonathan E. Isaacs, M.D., professor and chair of the Division of Hand Surgery in the VCU Department of Orthopaedic Surgery, to develop a way to reinnervate the muscle through neurotization.

In some cases, multiple nerves serve the same purpose for a single muscle group. McClure said surgeons can move a redundant nerve and implant it into the muscle graft, while connecting its other end to the main nerve bundle.

“It’s a live nerve and as soon as you implant it into the muscle graft, it’s going to sprout new axons and start a signaling process that’s going to be advantageous,” he said. “It could be a perfect storm for regeneration.”

Researchers hope that this strategy of using decellularized muscle grafts — tissue that has been stripped of its cells, leaving behind the matrix and structure — will improve muscle and nerve regeneration and reinnervation. Improving function may also lead to the body building more muscle fibers.

An article about the research appears in the August 2018 issue of the Journal of Tissue Engineering.