Bone Tissue Engineering: Problems Facing a Bench-Side to Bedside Solution

The field of tissue engineering has expanded at a staggering rate. In terms of bone tissue engineering research alone this has been represented by a dozen or so manuscripts being published in 1990, increasing to almost 18,000 at the time of writing. This is compounded by the fact that the tissue engineering market is estimated to be approximately 90 billion USD by 2016 [1]. Even so, the leap from research to a reliable commercial product in bone tissue engineering has been slow to say the least, specifically in terms of bioactive materials. This begs the question: What factor(s) are contributing to this evident gap between science and clinics? Does the majority of burden lay with us the scientists? Are clinicians significantly invested in progress? Are the regulatory bodies actively inhibiting progress? Are the industrial targets pulling their weight? And finally, are our funding bodies sufficiently versed in ‘the clinical problem’ to fairly assess true translational medicine? The truth would appear to suggest that all stakeholders have questions to answer.