Cell Transplantation for Lumbar Spine Degenerative Disk Disease

We designed a study using the dog as our model to investigate the hypothesis that repair of the damaged disk is technically feasible, autologous cells can be reproducibly cultured under defined and controlled conditions, percutaneous delivery is possible, and disk cells will integrate with the surrounding tissue, produce the appropriate intervertebral disk extracellular matrix, and potentially provide a functional solution to disk repair.