Clinical relevance of gene therapy and growth factors in sports injuries

Abstract

With increasing sports activity, orthopedic surgeons have dealt with more sports-related injuries in recent years. Ligaments, tendons, articular cartilage, meniscal tissue, and muscles are most commonly injured tissues in sports. Some of these tissues have poor healing capacity with poor blood supply. Application of exogenous growth factors has been demonstrated to accelerate and modify the healing process in ligaments, tendons, meniscal tissue, cartilage, and skeletal muscle. Also gene therapy in somatic cells has been widely accepted and it can be thought as the drug delivery method to the target tissue. The aim of the gene therapy in somatic cells at the injury or the inflammation site is the production of growth factors by local cells. By this way the growth factor or a cytokine that can affect the healing process is synthesized by the local cells to modify the healing period.