Incorporating insulin growth Factor‐1 into regenerative and personalised medicine for musculoskeletal disorders: A systematic review

Abstract

Musculoskeletal disorders are commonly associated with decreased physical activities, which affect the quality of life. While current interventions carry complications, including post-operative complications and drug side effects, regenerative and personalized medicine had been researched. Till date, regenerative medicine in treating musculoskeletal disorders had been studied in various aspects, including the use of growth factors such as insulin growth factor-1 (IGF-1) to enhance healing potential. IGF-1 is one of the common growth factors secreted during the early phase of healing responsible for cellular migration, proliferation, secretion, and differentiation leading to musculoskeletal regeneration. This systematic review summarized the role of IGF-1 in musculoskeletal regeneration at the cellular level.An extensive literature search was done in PubMed Central and PubMed from 2009 to present, 2020. The inclusion criteria include the original research related to IGF-1 in musculoskeletal regeneration done in vivo or in vitro. During the search, 208 journals were identified, whereby, 34 had met the inclusion criteria. Most studies reported that incorporating IGF-1 into regenerative medicine enhances the healing potential of bones and cartilages while only a few focused on ligaments, tendons and muscles. The contradicting results reported among some studies show that role of IGF-1 in musculoskeletal regeneration differs depending on the presence of other factors in the culture medium or environment and the cell receptors. Hence, future studies should characterize all the known factors which may be important to enhance the healing potential of IGF-1 on the musculoskeletal system. Also, more studies should be conducted on ligaments, tendons, and muscles of the musculoskeletal system.