Medical advances have led to a welcome increase in life expectancy. However, accompanying longevity introduces new challenges: increases in age-related diseases and associated reductions in quality of life. The loss of skeletal tissue that can accompany trauma, injury, disease or advancing years can result in significant morbidity and significant socio-economic cost and emphasise the need for new, more reliable skeletal regeneration strategies. To address the unmet need for bone augmentation, tissue engineering and regenerative medicine have come to the fore in recent years with new approaches for de novo skeletal tissue formation. Typically, these approaches seek to harness stem cells, innovative scaffolds and biological factors that promise enhanced and more reliable bone formation strategies to improve the quality of life for many. This review provides an overview of recent developments in bone tissue engineering focusing on skeletal stem cells, vascular development, bone formation and the translation from preclinical in vivo models to clinical delivery.
Keywords: Biomaterial; Bone tissue regeneration; Osteogenesis; Osteoprogenitor; Skeletal stem cell; Translational research.