We used multimodal compositional magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) techniques, combined with clinical outcomes, to differentiate the alternations of composition in repair cartilage with allogeneic human adipose-derived mesenchymal progenitor cells (haMPCs) in knee osteoarthritis (KOA) patients.
Eighteen patients participated a phase I/IIa clinical trial. All patients were divided randomly into three groups with intra-articular injections of haMPCs: the low-dose (1.0 × 10
Significant differences were observed in quantitative T1rho, T2, T2star, R2star, and ADC measurements in patients of three dose groups, suggesting a possible compositional changes of cartilage with the treatment of allogeneic haMPCs. Also significant reduction in WOMAC and SF-36 scores showed the symptoms might be alleviated to some extent with this new treatment. As regards sensibilities of multi-parametric mappings to detect compositional or structural changes of cartilage, T1rho mapping was most sensitive to differentiate difference between three dose groups.
Clinicaltrials, NCT02641860 . Registered 3 December 2015.
These results showed that multi-compositional MRI sequences might be an effective tool to evaluate the promotion of the repair of cartilage with allogeneic haMPCs by providing information of compositional alterations of cartilage.