Endochondral bone tissue engineering: using cartilage to drive vascularized bone regeneration (87.6)

There is a significant unmet clinical need to develop improved strategies to promote vascularized bone regeneration. Current bone graft technologies promote repair through direct osteogenesis by use of auto- or allografted bone. Critical failures associated with these therapies include osteonecrosis and poor osseointegration. The long-term goal of this project is to develop a tissue engineering approach to promote endochondral bone formation, in which bone forms through a cartilage intermediate. Endochondral ossification is the normal mechanism by which long bones form and the majority of fractures heal. By leveraging this normal healing response, we hypothesize we can overcome the clinical problems of osteonecrosis and poor integration to produce a vascularized and integrated bone regenerate. To test this hypothesis, critical sized defects were created in mid-diaphysis of murine tibia. Defects remained empty, or were filled with a cartilage graft, autograft or allograft bone. Our data show cartilage graf...