The ability to generate new bone for skeletal use is a major clinical need. Although autogenous grafts or allogenic bone have been used for many years, there are a number of disadvantages to their use including the failure of complete resorption of autogenous bone, difficulties in shaping the bone graft to fill the defect and, often, a lack of sufficient material for orthopaedic application .
Research is centred on tissue engineering approaches for new cartilage and bone formation.
Growth and differentiation of human osteoprogenitors on biodegradable biomimetic structures and films. J. Bone Min. Future potentials for using osteogenic stem cells and biomaterials in orthopaedics. Human bone cell growth on biomimetic porous scaffolds. Human bone marrow osteoprogenitors express estrogen receptor-alpha and bone morphogenetic proteins 2 and 4 mRNA during osteoblastic differentiation.