The Role of Bone Morphogenetic Proteins in Tissue Engineering Particulate Bone Grafts

Bone defects of various causes are important medical and socioeconomical problems because of the impossibility of spontaneous healing, difficult treatment, and long healing period. There are multiple, varied, and relatively complicated ways of solving these problems. Over time, numerous investigations carried out have shown failures arising from the use of autografts and homografts. The disadvantages of these methods prompted a search for other methods of bone reconstruction. Bone substitutes can play an important role in bone reconstructive surgery. In this context, tissue engineering bone grafts has offered an alternative. The aim of our research was to evaluate the feasibility of creating a tissue-engineered bone using mesenchymal stem cells seeded on a scaffold obtained from the red deer deciduous horn. We tried to demonstrate the advantages of using bone morphogenetic proteins (BMP-2) and transforming growth factor beta (TGF-beta) as promoters of the differentiation process. Our study was carried out on animal model, an outbred CD 1 mouse strain. Our research demonstrated that supplementation with growth factors (BMP-2, TGF-beta) in osteogenic medium improved and accelerated bony-line differentiation and mineralization process. The same factors accelerated and stabilized the osteoblast differentiation and inhibit different lineage appearance such as myeloid metaplasia.