Future of tissue engineering in rheumatic diseases

Chronic inflammation during rheumatoid arthritis and degenerative processes during osteoarthritis eventually result in joint destruction. Anti-inflammatory therapies facilitate the inhibition or delay of progressing joint cartilage and bone loss, but do not regenerate these tissues. Surgical procedures are quite unsatisfactory in long-term evaluation and often lead to endoprothetic joint replacement. Present tissue engineering technologies offer new strategies for the treatment of cartilage and bone defects. Here, beyond implantation of cell suspensions, biomaterials combined with tissue-specific cells or mesenchymal stem cells are clinically applied. This review focuses on state-of-the-art and future in situ mesenchymal stem cell-based tissue engineering approaches for joint repair in patients with rheumatic diseases.