Innovative Biomaterials for Bone Regrowth

Abstract

The regenerative medicine, a new discipline that merges biological sciences and the fundamental of engineering to develop biological substitutes, has greatly benefited from recent advances in the material engineering and the role of stem cells in tissue regeneration. Regenerative medicine strategies, involving the combination of biomaterials/scaffolds, cells, and bioactive agents, have been of great interest especially for the repair of damaged bone and bone regrowth. In the last few years, the life expectancy of our population has progressively increased. Aging has highlighted the need for intervention on human bone with biocompatible materials that show high performance for the regeneration of the bone, efficiently and in a short time. In this review, the different aspects of tissue engineering applied to bone engineering were taken into consideration. The first part of this review introduces the bone cellular biology/molecular genetics. Data on biomaterials, stem cells, and specific growth factors for the bone regrowth are reported in this review.

Keywords: biomaterial; bone; growth factors; regenerative medicine; stem cells.

Figure 1

Representation of key elements for bone regrowth. The regenerative medicine improves bone repair using:(i) mesenchymal stem cells (hMSCs) derived from different tissues, including the bone marrow (BM-MSCs), adipose (ADSCs), dental pulp (DPSCs), synovial membrane (SMSCs), umbilical cord (UC) and umbilical cord blood cells (UCBCs); (ii) biomaterials/scaffolds classified in ceramics, polymers and composite; (iii) Platelet rich-plasma (PRP) and growth factors, such as platelet derived growth factor (PDGF), vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF), fibroblast growth factor (FGF), transforming growth factor-β1 (TGF-β1), insulin-like growth factor 1 (IGF-1) and bone morphogenetic proteins (BMPs).