In vivo bone formation by human bone marrow cells: effect of osteogenic culture supplements and cell densities.

Bone marrow is known to contain a population of osteoprogenitor cells that can go through complete differentiation when cultured in a medium containing appropriate bioactive factors. In this study, porous particles of a calcium phosphate material were seeded with adult human bone marrow cells in the second passage. After an additional culture period of 1 wk in the particles, these hybrid constructs were subcutaneouslly implanted in nude mice with a survival period of 4 wk. The cell seeding densities range from 0-200 000 cells per particle and the cell culture system was designed to investigate the single and combined effects of dexamethasone and recombinant human bone morphogenetic protein 2 (rhBMP-2). The hybrid "material/tissue" constructs were processed for histology and the amount of de novo bone formation was quantified, for each culture condition, by histomorphometric techniques. The relative percentage of mineralized bone formation reached a maximal value of 19.77+/-5.06, for samples cultured in the presence of rhBMP-2 and with a seeding density of 200 000 cells/particle, compared to 0.52+/-0.45 for samples in which no cells had been cultured and had been incubated in culture medium supplemented with Dex and rhBMP-2. For the tested conditions and for the low cell numbers used in this study, rhBMP-2 proved to be an essential bioactive factor to obtain in vivo bone formation by our culture system. The results from this study prove the potential of cultured adult human bone marrow cells to initiate and accelerate de novo bone formation after transplantation into an ectopic site. Copyright 1998 Kluwer Academic Publishers