Introduction | sureproject

Bone fractures are a prevalent ailment treated for in medicine. Often causing discomfort or even debilitation in patients, effective healing of a fracture is necessary. Despite treatment and the body’s natural healing processes, failure of a fracture to heal, known as a non-union, does occur in some situations. A non- union can lead to delayed recovery of the patient and ensuing health complications.Advances in biomedicine and technology have brought about many options that could be looked at as alternatives for the treatment of non-unions. Due to the issues associated with autografts and allografts, including donor site morbidity and rejection , an alternative to creating viable tissue to be used at the site of the nonunion is through the application of human bone marrow derived mesenchymal stem cells. Mesenchymal stem cells are multipotent adult stem cells frequently found in the bone marrow. Due to their multipotent nature, mesenchymal stem cells have the ability to differentiate into osteoblasts, chondrocytes, myocytes, or adipocytes under the right conditions (What are adult stem cells?). One such type of these cell types, osteoblasts, are the cells involved in bone fracture healing. My SURE project revolved around the idea that mesenchymal stem cells grown ex vivo could be placed at the site of the non-union at which point they will receive the body’s signal to differentiate into osteoblasts. After their differentiation, the osteoblasts will excrete the necessary matrix needed for bone formation, hence healing the non-union in a natural way.