# Variation in Humeral Head Bone Marrow Characteristics and Their Associations with Rotator Cuff Repair Healing

> **NIH NIH R21** · CLEVELAND CLINIC LERNER COM-CWRU · 2021 · $382,212

## Abstract

Project Summary
Healing following rotator cuff repair (RCR) remains a significant clinical challenge, and repair failure rates of 20-
30% continue to be reported. To date limited attention has been directed toward understanding how intrinsic
mechanistic factors may contribute to variable healing rates following RCR. The objective of this proposal is to
quantify the variability of the humeral head bone marrow in patients undergoing RCR and test the prognostic
significance of the local concentration of connective tissue progenitors (CTPs) for tendon healing. Our approach
will be to enroll 50 patients undergoing RCR. At the time of RCR, 8 ml of bone marrow will be aspirated from the
humeral head for quantitative progenitor cell assays. A core biopsy at the tendon repair footprint will be collected
for histologic analysis of bone marrow composition. Tendon healing will be assessed by MRI (Sugaya score) at
6 months follow-up, the timeframe in which majority of re-tears occur The variation of bone marrow
characteristics among patients will be described (Aim 1) and their correlation with rotator cuff tendon healing will
be investigated (Aim 2). The proposal seeks to shift the investigational paradigm to intrinsic patient biologic
factors, a fundamental and under-investigated realm of potential prognostic factors of RCR healing.
Demonstrating that humeral head characteristics associate with re-tear after RCR will support future work to
develop tools to screen patient bone marrow for characteristics predictive of RCR success or failure and advance
novel methods that promote local enrichment or transplantation of progenitor cells to augment RCR.

## Key facts

- **NIH application ID:** 10302881
- **Project number:** 1R21AR078401-01A1
- **Recipient organization:** CLEVELAND CLINIC LERNER COM-CWRU
- **Principal Investigator:** Kathleen Anne Derwin
- **Activity code:** R21 (R01, R21, SBIR, etc.)
- **Funding institute:** NIH
- **Fiscal year:** 2021
- **Award amount:** $382,212
- **Award type:** 1
- **Project period:** 2021-09-24 → 2023-08-31

## Primary source

NIH RePORTER: https://reporter.nih.gov/project-details/10302881

## Citation

> US National Institutes of Health, RePORTER application 10302881, Variation in Humeral Head Bone Marrow Characteristics and Their Associations with Rotator Cuff Repair Healing (1R21AR078401-01A1). Retrieved via AI Analytics 2026-05-26 from https://api.ai-analytics.org/grant/nih/10302881. Licensed CC0.

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