Document Type

Article

Disciplines

Life Sciences | Medicine and Health Sciences

Abstract

Abstract

With greater than 500,000 orthopaedic procedures performed in the United States each year requiring a bone graft, the development of novel graft materials is necessary. We report that some porous polymer/ceramic composite scaffolds possess intrinsic osteoinductivity as shown through their capacity to induce in vivo host osteoid mineralization and in vitro stem cell osteogenesis making them attractive synthetic bone graft substitutes. It was discovered that certain low crystallinity ceramics partially dissociate into simple signaling molecules (i.e., calcium and phosphate ions) that induce stem cells to endogenously produce their own osteoinductive proteins. Review of the literature has uncovered a variety of simple signaling molecules (i.e., gases, ions, and redox reagents) capable of inducing other desirable stem cell differentiation through endogenous growth factor production. Inductive simple signaling molecules, which we have termed inducerons, represent a paradigm shift in the field of regenerative engineering where they can be utilized in place of recombinant protein growth factors.

Comments

Originally published in :

PLoS One. 2014; 9(7): e101627. Published online Jul 14, 2014. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0101627 PMCID: PMC4096515 Copyright: @2014 Cushnie et al. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited

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