Cell-based therapies for skeletal regenerative medicine

Skeletal deficits represent a substantial biomedical burden on the US healthcare system. Current strategies for reconstructing bony defects are fraught with inadequacies. Cell-based therapies for skeletal regeneration offer a paradigm shift that may provide alternative solutions. Substantial work has identified a host of cellular sources that possess the potential for osteogenic differentiation. Significant efforts have been devoted toward characterizing the role of postnatal cellular sources that are relatively abundant and easily accessible. Among these, the potential of using adipose-derived stromal cells for skeletal regeneration has garnered much interest. Integral to these efforts directed at characterizing cellular sources are studies that seek to understand the factors that initiate and regulate osteogenic differentiation of progenitor cells. Specifically, focus has been directed on elucidating the role of bone morphogenetic protein and fibroblast growth factor signaling in regulating osteogenic differentiation of osteoprogenitor cells. Concurrent studies in the field of scaffold design have also helped to advance the potential for cell-based therapies.