This 2004 JBJS Current Concepts Review by Muschler, Nakamoto, and Griffith lays out the engineering framework for clinical cell-based tissue engineering in orthopaedics — covering stem cell biology, the four major strategies for deploying connective tissue progenitors, the physics of oxygen transport that limits cell survival in grafts, and the six design variables that determine scaffold performance.
When selecting or evaluating a bone graft substitute, scaffold, or cell-based therapy, think through all six scaffold design domains — especially pore architecture and degradation kinetics — and recognize that any graft thicker than ~1 mm will have central zones where diffusion alone cannot sustain transplanted cells, making revascularization speed and selective progenitor enrichment the key determinants of success.
This 2004 JBJS Current Concepts Review by Muschler, Nakamoto, and Griffith lays out the engineering framework for clinical cell-based tissue engineering in orthopaedics — covering stem cell biology, the four major strategies for deploying connective tissue progenitors, the physics of oxygen transport that limits cell survival in grafts, and the six design variables that determine scaffold performance.
When selecting or evaluating a bone graft substitute, scaffold, or cell-based therapy, think through all six scaffold design domains — especially pore architecture and degradation kinetics — and recognize that any graft thicker than ~1 mm will have central zones where diffusion alone cannot sustain transplanted cells, making revascularization speed and selective progenitor enrichment the key determinants of success.