**Bone Regeneration: Current Status and Future Prospects**

Hossein Ghanbari and Roghayyeh Vakili‐Ghartavol

Additional information is available at the end of the chapter

http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/63912

#### **Abstract**

The ability of bone to heal with practically no scarring is the most extraordinary feature of it. However, perturbations of the fracture site could disrupt the repair process when defects reach a critical size, resulting in non‐union. Current therapies include allograft‐ ing, autografting, applying vascularized grafts, and other bone transport techniques. However, although commonplace in orthopaedic surgery, these treatments have some limitations.

Harvesting autografts is very expensive, typically from the iliac crest, associated with donor‐site morbidity due to infection and haematoma and constrained by anatomical limitations. Allografts are limited by the possible risks of introducing infection or disease, while vascularized grafts are prohibitively expensive. So, due to technical difficulties and shortcoming of reconstructive surgery, the need for suitable fillers in large fracture reconstructive surgery is inevitable. Thus, recent tissue engineering approaches have been attempted to create new bone based on stem or precursor cells seeded onto biocompatible materials or scaffolds, with or without appropriate growth factors to improve clinical outcome. This chapter review the clinical necessity for tissue engi‐ neered bone, recent approaches attempting to create new bone, the main challenges of them and the novel strategies to overcome these barriers.

**Keywords:** bone fracture, regenerative medicine, stem cell, scaffold, growth factor, os‐ teogenesis
