Stem cells hold potential to make special type of cartilage to health broken bones, says study
Researchers in US say that stem cells could one day be stimulated to make a special type of cartilage to help repair large, hard-to-heal bone fractures.
Gage Crump, associate professor of stem cell and regenerative medicine at the Dick School of Medicine at the University of Southern California, used the regeneration of zebrafish jawbone to show that the processes required for embryonic development are not necessarily repeated during regeneration of damaged body parts like fractured bones.
“An exciting finding from our work is that, somewhat counterintuitively, cartilage is critical for healing full-thickness bone injuries,” says Prof Crump, lead author of the study, which was published online in Development. “By understanding how this bone-producing cartilage is generated in the simpler zebrafish model, we hope to find ways to create more of this unique cartilage tissue in patients to better heal their bones.”
Zebrafish are vertebrates that have bones like humans but differ because they have the remarkable ability to regenerate many of their organs. When human bones fracture, a limited cartilage callus forms and is replaced by bone that bridges small but not large gaps. In zebrafish, however, the researchers found that the cartilage callus continued to expand and filled very large bone gaps. Remarkably, this cartilage then changed into bone throughout the large lesion.
“Traditionally, the therapeutic approach to healing bone has been to use bone cells or bone-like materials,” says Prof Francesca Mariani, study co-author. “This work suggests that, at least for large-scale repair, stimulating stem cells to make a special kind of cartilage might be more effective.”
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