Bone tissue engineering

The use of allograft bone and other bone substitutes in orthopedic surgery has increased tremendously over the last few years. There are inherent problems with allograft tissues, however, such as the risk of disease transmission and immunologic incompatibility. Strategies to reduce these risks include improving allograft sterilization methods and developing bone tissue substitutes were evaluated in this book. Tissue engineering offers a potential avenue to overcome the limitations related to traditional bone substitutes. To enhance the body's own repair system, i.e., tissue regeneration, biomaterial research focuses primarily on developing scaffolds for tissue engineering applications. Among adult stem cells, multipotent adipose stem cells can differentiate into osteoblastic cells when seeded on bioactive biomaterials and/or treated with osteogenic factors. Therefore, adipose stem cells are a promising cell source for bone tissue engineering. The subject of this book is topical and important because in aging population the need for orthopaedic operations will only increase with time.