Basic Study
Copyright ©The Author(s) 2025. Published by Baishideng Publishing Group Inc. All rights reserved.
World J Stem Cells. Jun 26, 2025; 17(6): 105491
Published online Jun 26, 2025. doi: 10.4252/wjsc.v17.i6.105491
Fibro-adipogenic progenitors prevent skeletal muscle degeneration at acute phase upon tendon rupture in a murine tibialis anterior tenotomy model
Zhe-Ci Ding, Juan-Juan He, Lu-Ze Shi, Jin Qian, Shu-Hao Mei, Xia Kang, Ji-Wu Chen
Zhe-Ci Ding, Lu-Ze Shi, Ji-Wu Chen, Department of Sports Medicine, Shanghai General Hospital, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, Shanghai 200080, China
Juan-Juan He, Shu-Hao Mei, Department of Neurosurgery, Huashan Hospital, Fudan University, Shanghai 200040, China
Jin Qian, Department of Orthopaedics, Guangdong Provincial People’s Hospital, Southern Medical University, Guangzhou 510080, Guangdong Province, China
Xia Kang, Pancreatic Injury and Repair Key Laboratory of Sichuan Province, The General Hospital of Western Theater Command, Chengdu 610083, Sichuan Province, China
Co-first authors: Zhe-Ci Ding and Juan-Juan He.
Co-corresponding authors: Xia Kang and Ji-Wu Chen.
Author contributions: Ding ZC and He JJ contributed equally to this manuscript as co-first authors of this manuscript. Ding ZC, He JJ, Shi LZ, and Qian J contributed to the acquisition of data; Ding ZC, He JJ, and Mei SH were responsible for analysis and interpretation of data; Ding ZC drafted the work; Chen JW revised the manuscript; Kang X and Chen JW made contributions to the conception and design of the work, they contributed equally to this manuscript as co-corresponding authors.
Supported by National Natural Science Foundation of China, No. 82172509.
Institutional animal care and use committee statement: All animal experiments conformed to the internationally accepted principles for the care and use of laboratory animals. The study was approved by the Institutional Animal Care and Use Committee of Shanghai General Hospital, No. 2023AW045.
Conflict-of-interest statement: All the authors report no relevant conflicts of interest for this article.
ARRIVE guidelines statement: The authors have read the ARRIVE guidelines, and the manuscript was prepared and revised according to the ARRIVE guidelines.
Data sharing statement: No additional data are available.
Open Access: This article is an open-access article that was selected by an in-house editor and fully peer-reviewed by external reviewers. It is distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution NonCommercial (CC BY-NC 4.0) license, which permits others to distribute, remix, adapt, build upon this work non-commercially, and license their derivative works on different terms, provided the original work is properly cited and the use is non-commercial. See: https://creativecommons.org/Licenses/by-nc/4.0/
Corresponding author: Ji-Wu Chen, MD, PhD, Chief Physician, Professor, Department of Sports Medicine, Shanghai General Hospital, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, No. 85 Wujin Road, Shanghai 200080, China. jeevechen@gmail.com
Received: January 27, 2025
Revised: March 7, 2025
Accepted: June 10, 2025
Published online: June 26, 2025
Processing time: 151 Days and 18.5 Hours
Core Tip

Core Tip: In this study, we demonstrate that fibro-adipogenic progenitors (FAPs) may actually attenuate early-stage degenerative processes following tendon rupture. To our knowledge, this represents the first investigation into the role of FAPs in early-stage skeletal muscle degeneration post-tendon rupture. Our work elucidates the dynamic changes in FAPs population and function during the early phases of muscle degeneration following tendon rupture, providing a more comprehensive understanding of FAPs biology in this context. These findings offer valuable insights for future research on therapeutic interventions and preventive strategies for post-rupture muscle degeneration.