Mesenchymal Stem Cells Associated with Bioceramics for Bone Tissue Regeneration

Bioactive bioceramics are a family of osteoconductive materials that include bioactive glass and calcium phosphates such as hydroxyapatite (HA) and tricalcium phosphate (β-TCP or α-TCP). These materials exhibit excellent bone binding properties and are usually designed to be used as bone fillers or as bioactive coatings on metal implants. Their in vivo resorption ability may be modulated by controlling synthesis and processing parameters. Bioceramics can be associated to stem cells in cell-based therapies, using transplanted cells to guide the spatially complex process of tissue formation, thus optimizing osteoinduction, osteoconduction, and osteogenesis. Although tissue engineering strategies using stem cells aim to ameliorate the prognosis of the grafted materials, there are several questions still to be addressed, such as which are the best materials and which are the best adult stem cells to be associated with these scaffolds in order to improve and hasten the replacement of bone fillers by newly formed bone tissue in an ideal way. Almost all structures such as bone, cranial and facial sutures, cartilage, ligaments, and teeth, are derived from mesenchymal cells. Mesenchymal stem cells (MSCs) have been isolated from most of the postnatal tissues, including several craniofacial tissues. They have a well-characterized potential to differentiate into all cellular lineages that constitute mesenchymal and connective tissues. Dental pulp tissue is an interesting source of MSCs to be used in tissue bioengineering studies due to their multi-differentiation potential, noninvasive and efficient process of isolation, immunosuppressive activity and similarity to bone cells. The aim of this work is to discuss the potential of mesenchymal stem cells to be used for guided osteogenesis and show the efficiency of its association with fabricated scaffolds to aid bone regeneration processes.