Clinical Applications of Bone Tissue Engineering in Orthopedic Trauma

Orthopaedic trauma is a major cause of morbidity and mortality worldwide. Although many fractures tend to heal if treated appropriately either by nonoperative or operative methods, delayed or failed healing, as well as infections, can lead to devastating complications. Tissue engineering is an exciting, emerging field with much scientific and clinical relevance in potentially overcoming the current limitations in the treatment of orthopaedic injuries.

While direct translation of bone tissue engineering technologies to clinical use remains challenging, considerable research has been done in studying how cells, scaffolds, and signals may be used to enhance acute fracture healing and to address the problematic scenarios of nonunion and critical-sized bone defects. Taken together, the research findings suggest that tissue engineering may be considered to stimulate angiogenesis and osteogenesis, to modulate the immune response to fractures, to improve the biocompatibility of implants, to prevent or combat infection, and to fill large gaps created by traumatic bone loss. The abundance of preclinical data supports the high potential of bone tissue engineering for clinical application, although a number of barriers to translation must first be overcome.

This review focuses on the current and potential applications of bone tissue engineering approaches in orthopaedic trauma with specific attention paid to acute fracture healing, nonunion, and critical-sized bone defects.