Bone Marrow Stem Cell Expansion for Bone Formation

Cleveland, Ohio –

Numerous studies have shown therapeutic potential of bone marrow derived stem cells for accelerating healing of bone injuries. Unfortunately, to date, few in vitro bone marrow stem cell expansion systems exist that can produce scalable quantities of stem cells in a easy to use and widely applicable manner.

Recently, a paper (Dennis et al. Clinical-scale Expansion Of a Mixed Population of Bone Marrow Derived Stem and Progenitor Cells for Potential Use in Bone Tissue Regeneration. Stem Cells. 2007 Jun 21) seems to have addressed this issue. The authors developed a closed bioreactor system for expanding bone marrow derived cells with osteogenic potential.

The authors tested 3 approaches: 1) culturing bone marrow stem cells in absence of exogenous cytokines; 2) culturing the bone marrow stem cells with exogenous cytokines; and 3) culturing the cells using an adherent subset.

All three culture conditions selectively expanded the mesenchymal progenitor subset as identified by expression of CD90, CD105, and CD166.

The ability of expanded cells to form bones in immunocompromised animals was highest in bone marrow stem cells cultured without exogenous cytokines. The culture of bone marrow stem cells without cytokines gave rise to cells that were equivalent to purified mesenchymal stem cells at inducing bone formation when administered in vivo at the same number.

In conclusion this study provides a simple and easy to use closed system for the clinical development of autologous bone marrow stem cell therapy for treatment of bone injuries.