Mesenchymal stem cells in orthopaedic tissue engineering
The main goal of regenerative orthopaedics is to provide better
treatments for diseases and injuries affecting musculoskeletal
system. There are three main approaches of regenerative
orthopaedics – activation of endogenous stem cells, cell therapy and
tissue engineering. Instead of replacing damaged tissues with
prosthetic and allograft material, tissue engineering aims at
production of autologous 3D tissue graft. There are three main
constituents of the tissue engineering system - cells, scaffold and
environment. Mesenchymal stem cells (MSCs) are adult stem cells
that constitute a variety of adult tissues and were found to
differentiate to several mesenchymal tissues including bone,
cartilage, stroma, adipose and connective tissue, muscle and tendon.
Therefore, MSCs are good candidates for the development of various
therapeutic modalities in orthopaedics. Various range of matrices
have been investigated as a support of MSC growth in 3D culture,
including carbohydrate-based scaffolds (agarose, alginate, chitosan,
and hyalorunate), protein-based scaffolds (collagen, fibrin and
gelatin) and artificial polymers (polyglicolic acid, polylactic acid,
polyethylene glycol and polycaprolactone). MSCs loaded on scaffold
need an adequate bioactive signal that will induce their
differentiation into desired cell type.
This review aims to highlight the concepts in bone and cartilage
tissue engineering with the special focus on mesenchymal stem cells,
their properties, source, isolation methods and environment
requirements needed for the successful graft production.