Bone Regeneration and Repair: Current and Future Aspects

Bone regeneration is a complex, well-orchestrated physiological process of bone formation, which can be seen during normal fracture healing, and is involved in continuous remodelling throughout adult life. However, there are complex clinical conditions in which bone regeneration is required in large quantity, such as for skeletal reconstruction of large bone defects created by trauma, infection, tumour resection and skeletal abnormalities, or cases in which the regenerative process is compromised, including avascular necrosis, atrophic non-unions and osteoporosis. Further understanding in this area could be the key to an improved and integrated strategy for skeletal repair. In the future, control of bone regeneration with strategies that mimic the normal cascade of bone formation will offer successful management of conditions requiring enhancement of bone regeneration, and reduce their morbidity and cost in the long term. Research is ongoing within all relevant fields, and it is hoped that many bone disease processes secondary to trauma, bone resection due to ablative surgery, ageing, and metabolic or genetic skeletal disorders will be successfully treated with novel bone-regeneration protocols that may address both local and systemic enhancement to optimize outcome.