Long bone development depends on endochondral bone formation, a complex process requiring exquisite balance between hypertrophic cartilage (HC) formation and its ossification. Dysregulation of this process may result in skeletal dysplasias and heterotopic ossification. Endochondral ossification requires the precise orchestration of HC vascularization, extracellular matrix remodeling, and the re...

Fibronectin has been localized by indirect immunofluorescence during the various phases of endochondral bone formation in response to subcutaneously implanted demineralized bone matrix. Its histologic appearance has been correlated with results of biosynthetic experiments. (a) The implanted collagenous bone matrix was coated with fibronectin before and during mesenchymal cell proliferation. (b)...

Bone tissue engineering via endochondral ossification has been explored by chondrogenically priming cells using soluble mediators for at least 3 weeks to produce a hypertrophic cartilage template. Although recapitulation of endochondral ossification has been achieved, long-term in vitro culture is required for priming cells through repeated supplementation of inductive factors in the media. To ...

CCN family protein 2/connective tissue growth factor (CCN2/CTGF) is a unique molecule that promotes the entire endochondral ossification process and regeneration of damaged articular cartilage. Also, CCN2 has been shown to enhance the adhesion and migration of bone marrow stromal cells as well as the growth and differentiation of osteoblasts; hence, its utility in bone regeneration has been sug...

Embryonic stem cells can provide an unlimited supply of pluripotent cells for tissue engineering applications. Bone tissue engineering by directly differentiating ES cells (ESCs) into osteoblasts has been unsuccessful so far. Therefore, we investigated an alternative approach, based on the process of endochondral ossification. A cartilage matrix was formed in vitro by mouse ESCs seeded on a sca...

Differentiation is the cellular process that regulates development of long bones and joint surface cartilage of synovial cavities. Growth plate cartilage development is commonly referred to as endochondral ossification which is the end stage of long bone development. Endochondral ossification proceeds as a continuum of chondrocyte proliferation cycles followed by non-proliferative phases couple...

Transplantation of collagenous matrix from the rat diaphyseal bone to subcutaneous sites resulted in new bone formation by an endochondral sequence. Functional bone marrow develops within the newly formed ossicle. On day 1, the implanted matrix was a discrete conglomerate with fibrin clot and polymorphonuclear leukocytes. By day 3, the leukocytes disappeared, and this event was followed by migr...

Large-area craniofacial defects remain a challenge for orthopaedists, hastening the need to develop facile and safe tissue engineering strategy; osteoconductive material combination of optimal growth factors microenvironment should be considered. Faced with unmet need, we propose that abundant cytokines chemokines can secreted from bone defect, provoking infiltration endogenous stem cells assis...

To compare the ability of the cartilage precursor cells derived from allogenic and autologous bone marrow mesenchymal stem cells (MSCs) respectively seeded onto “two-phase” allogeneic bone matrix gelatin (BMG) for constructing tissue engineered cartilage in the repair of articular cartilage defects and to observe the repairing efficacy of the two composites for providing the basis for the clini...

Runx2 and Axin2 regulate skeletal development. We recently determined that Axin2 and Runx2 molecularly interact in differentiating osteoblasts to regulate intramembranous bone formation, but the relationship between these factors in endochondral bone formation was unresolved. To address this, we examined the effects of Axin2 deficiency on the cleidocranial dysplasia (CCD) phenotype of Runx2(+/-...