Abstract
Craniofacial bone defects can result from various disorders, including congenital malformations, tumor resection, infection, severe trauma, and accidents. Successfully regenerating cranial defects is an integral step to restore craniofacial function. However, challenges managing and controlling new bone tissue formation remain. Current advances in tissue engineering and regenerative medicine use innovative techniques to address these challenges. The use of biomaterials, stromal cells, and growth factors have demonstrated promising outcomes in vitro and in vivo. Natural and synthetic bone grafts combined with Mesenchymal Stromal Cells (MSCs) and growth factors have shown encouraging results in regenerating critical-size cranial defects. One of prevalent growth factors is Bone Morphogenetic Protein-2 (BMP-2). BMP-2 is defined as a gold standard growth factor that enhances new bone formation in vitro and in vivo. Recently, emerging evidence suggested that Megakaryocytes (MKs), induced by Thrombopoietin (TPO), show an increase in osteoblast proliferation in vitro and bone mass in vivo. Furthermore, a co-culture study shows mature MKs enhance MSC survival rate while maintaining their phenotype. Therefore, MKs can provide an insight as a potential therapy offering a safe and effective approach to regenerating critical-size cranial defects.
Highlights
Current approach to regenerate craniofacial bone defects is by pursuing tissue engineering approaches using bone graft substitutes combined with stem cells and growth factors
The uprising and rapidly developing field of stem cell technology and progress made in biomaterials science and technology have enabled cranial defect regeneration
The use of growth factors, such as Bone Morphogenetic Protein-2 (BMP-2) and Platelet-Rich Plasma (PRP), have multiple advantages that activate Mesenchymal Stromal Cells (MSCs) to differentiate into osteoblasts lineage cells, though limitations exist
Summary
Publisher’s Note: MDPI stays neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. A steady increase in the number of published articles shows an interest in further understanding and utilizing MSCs for craniofacial bone tissue engineering purposes in the past decade [55,56,57,58,59,60], Figure 1. Increasing number of published articles indicates an interest in investigating mesenchymal stromal cells for craniofacial bone regeneration. Whether or not MKs can facilitate MSCs proliferation and differentiation to regenerate cranial bone defects is a question yet to be addressed. We will review methods currently used to restore cranial bone defects, such as natural and synthetic bone graft substitutes, MSCs (BMSCs and DPSCs), and current growth factors commonly used for cranial bone regeneration. We will present a potential therapy; a discussion on rationale of inducing MKs for therapeutic applications to facilitate craniofacial bone regeneration
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