Cells for musculoskeletal tissue engineering

Central to the field of regenerative medicine and tissue engineering is the ability to manipulate stem/progenitor cells for the benefit of regeneration of tissues and organs. This chapter describes stem/progenitor cell types that have been utilized in the regeneration of musculoskeletal tissues. Pluripotent stem cells can produce all three germ layers, although their safe and reproducible differentiation into specific tissue lineages of mesoderm cells such as osteoblasts, tenocytes, or chondrocytes is not yet well delineated. Mesenchymal stem/progenitor cells (MSCs) from bone marrow, periosteum, adipose, and other sources have been used broadly not only for repair of musculoskeletal defects, but also other disease models such as diabetes, myocardial ischemia, stroke, and graft-versus-host disease. The behavior of stem/progenitor cells is governed by signaling cues including growth factors and transcriptional factors, and increasingly demonstrated by biomaterials that modulate cell-cell interactions and tissue oxygenation. In this chapter, we critically evaluate current literature on stem/progenitor cells and their regulatory cues in musculoskeletal tissue engineering.