Bone Tissue Engineering by Cell Transplantation

Abstract

Bone defects that require skeletal reconstruction are a common problem facing physicians today. These defects often arise as a result of trauma, tumor resection, infection, or skeletal abnormalities. Traditional therapies to overcome these bone deficits include bone grafts, bone cement, and synthetic bone substitutes including plastics, ceramics, and metals. Each of these has limitations that preclude it from being an ideal bone replacement, indicating a need for bone tissue engineering. Tissue engineering seeks to regenerate this lost bone tissue by favorably utilizing the interactions between cells, growth factors, and scaffolding in novel bone tissue engineering constructs and therapies. Although different tissue engineering approaches may place emphasis on the cellular component, the involved growth factors, or implanted matrices, this review focuses on the use of cell transplantation to regenerate bone and enhance bone healing. By transplanting different cell populations including bone marrow cells, mesenchymal stem cells, osteoblasts, or genetically modified cells, researchers have shown the potential of these cell-based tissue engineering approaches to engineer new bone tissue. Because of this demonstrated ability, cell transplantation will undoubtedly play an important role in eventual tissue engineering therapies for treating bone defects.