Bone regeneration with mesenchymal stem cells.

Bone possesses the intrinsic regeneration capacity as part of the repair process in response to injury, during skeletal development or continuous remodeling throughout adult life. However, some complex clinical conditions require bone regeneration in too large quantity, and tissue engineering approach was developed to favor the regeneration of a new functional tissue. Mesenchymal stem cells (MSCs) have emerged as a promising alternative to the traditional surgical techniques. The purpose of this mini-review is to investigate the role of MSCs in clinical practice for bone regeneration, documenting the state of art and indentifying future research directions.We performed a search of the literature on PUBMED database between 2001 and 2011 using the key words "MSC and bone regeneration". Inclusion criteria were clinical studies regarding the use of MSC in bone regeneration, for both bone repair and metabolic bone diseases, and in English language. References from selected papers were also screened.Our search resulted in 516 articles. Among these a total of 18 articles were included: 12 case series, 5 case reports and 1 comparative studies.MSCs represent an exciting and promising stem cell population for regeneration of bone in skeletal diseases, especially when tissue engineering or biomaterials are applied. However, literature results are limited, because of the small number and the low quality of trials, the lack of controls and the short follow-up. Researchers have to perform more high quality studies in order to document results and increase the potential of MSCs use in clinical practice, to develop a minimally invasive treatment to favor high quality bone tissue regeneration.