No abstract

A promising approach for musculoskeletal repair and regeneration is mesenchymal-stem-cell- (MSC-)based tissue engineering. The aim of the study was to apply a simple protocol based on mincing the umbilical cord (UC), without removing any blood vessels or using any enzymatic digestion, to rapidly obtain an adequate number of multipotent UC-MSCs. We obtained, at passage 1 (P1), a mean value of 4, 2 × 106 cells (SD 0,4) from each UC. At immunophenotypic characterization, cells were positive for CD73, CD90, CD105, CD44, CD29, and HLA-I and negative for CD34 and HLA-class II, with a subpopulation negative for both HLA-I and HLA-II. Newborn origin and multilineage potential toward bone, fat, cartilage, and muscle was demonstrated. Telomere length was similar to that of bone-marrow (BM) MSCs from young donors. The results suggest that simply collecting UC-MSCs at P1 from minced umbilical cord fragments allows to achieve a valuable population of cells suitable for orthopaedic tissue engineering.

We propose a culture-free approach to osteochondral repair with minced autologous cartilage fragments loaded onto a scaffold composed of a hyaluronic acid (HA)-derived membrane, platelet-rich fibrin matrix (PRFM) and fibrin glue. The aim of the study was to demonstrate in vitro

Stem cells have huge applications in the field of tissue engineering and regenerative medicine. Their use is currently not restricted to the life-threatening diseases but also extended to disorders involving the structural tissues, which may not jeopardize the patients' life, but certainly influence their quality of life. In fact, a particularly popular line of research is represented by the regeneration of bone and cartilage tissues to treat various orthopaedic disorders. Most of these pioneering research lines that aim to create new treatments for diseases that currently have limited therapies are still in the bench of the researchers. However, in recent years, several clinical trials have been started with satisfactory and encouraging results. This article aims to review the concept of stem cells and their characterization in terms of site of residence, differentiation potential and therapeutic prospective. In fact, while only the bone marrow was initially considered as a "reservoir" of this cell population, later, adipose tissue and muscle tissue have provided a considerable amount of cells available for multiple differentiation. In reality, recently, the so-called "stem cell niche" was identified as the perivascular space, recognizing these cells as almost ubiquitous. In the field of bone and joint diseases, their potential to differentiate into multiple cell lines makes their application ideally immediate through three main modalities: (1) cells selected by withdrawal from bone marrow, subsequent culture in the laboratory, and ultimately transplant at the site of injury; (2) bone marrow aspirate, concentrated and directly implanted into the injury site; (3) systemic mobilization of stem cells and other bone marrow precursors by the use of growth factors. The use of this cell population in joint and bone disease will be addressed and discussed, analysing both the clinical outcomes but also the basic research background, which has justified their use for the treatment of bone, cartilage and meniscus tissues.

The combined porous meshes tested in the present study demonstrated to reduce but not to prevent the adhesion formation, even if with some differences. Combined porous meshes could be chosen instead of simple meshes for retro-rectus preperitoneal prosthetic ventral hernia repair.