Abstract
As for regenerative medicine in hard tissue field, such as osteoarthritis or bone tumor cases, we have combined both artificial scaffolds and patient's own cells. Osteoarthritis causes the cartilage between the joints to break down, and surgery of total joint replacements using artifitial prosthesis is most common treatment. However, complicatedness which fail in the integrity between the host bone and prosthesis interface are not negligible. Concerning the treatments of bone tumor, synthetic calcium-phosphate ceramics are now available; however, massive bone defects cannot be treated with ceramics themselves. To overcome these problems, we have combined culture-expanded osteogenic cells with synthetic scaffolds. The cell source includes mesenchymal stem cells (MSCs) derived from small amount of patient's bone marrow. We seeded the cells on artificial scaffolds and further cultured to accomplish osteogenic differentiation, resulting in osteoblasts/bone matrix on the scaffolds. We have already applied the hybrid scaffold to more than 30 cases.
