Help us fight disease and injury in animals

Current Research

We are currently performing research to determine if stem cells can aid tendon regeneration in horses and how they work. This will help us to understand which is the best type of cell to use and when and how to use them to ensure that more horses can return to work following a tendon injury and with fewer horses suffering a re-injury.

In current clinical practice horses are treated with their own mesenchymal stem (MS) cells. This requires each horse to have a tissue sample isolated and results in a delay while the cells are processed and grown to sufficient numbers for injection into the tendon. The advantage of embryo-derived stem (ES) cells is that they grow indefinitely in the laboratory and may therefore provide an “off the shelf” source of cells for treating injuries.

We have shown that ES cells can be injected into the damaged tendons of horses without any undesirable side effects being detected in the 3 month period studied. The ES cells survive in high and stable numbers in the tendon, which is in contrast to MS cells which rapidly die out. We are now performing research to determine if the ES cells have turned into tendon cells and if they can help to re-organise the damaged tendon tissue.