Will new methods that increase blood flow to bone implants improve viability of engineered bone tissue?

New, advanced techniques are needed that can mimic the normal blood supply that feeds natural bone to improve the viability and success of restorative procedures to replace damaged or diseased bone tissue using engineered constructs. A comprehensive review article describing the most promising strategies for vascularization of bone tissue substitutes is published in Tissue Engineering, Part B: Reviews, a peer-reviewed journal from Mary Ann Liebert, Inc. The article is available free online on the Tissue Engineering website.

The lack of an adequate blood supply to engineered bone implants has been a major limiting factor in the ability of these large tissue engineered implants to survive and integrate in the body. Many new strategies for stimulating the growth of new blood vessels and the formation of a vascular network to carry nutrients and oxygen and aid in healing are in development, as presented by Lonnissa H. Nguyen, PhD, and coauthors from Massachusetts Institute of Technology (Cambridge); Brigham and Women's Hospital, Harvard University, and Harvard Medical School (MA); Ecole Polytechnique (Palaiseau, France); Chonnam National University (Gwangju, South Korea); Stanford University (CA); Tohoku University (Sendai, Japan). They describe the different methods and their limitations in the article "Vascularized Bone Tissue Engineering: Approaches for Potential Improvement."

"There is a critical need to develop innovative techniques for tissue vascularization, and the work by Nguyen et al. demonstrates both past successes in the field and future avenues for investigation," says Reviews Co-Editor-in-Chief John P. Fisher, PhD, Professor and Associate Chair, Fischell Department of Bioengineering, University of Maryland, College Park, MD.

Provided by Mary Ann Liebert, Inc