Journal of Orthopaedics and Traumatology is calling for submissions to our Collection on Regenerative and Orthobiologics. The field of regenerative medicine has had great attention from both researchers and clinicians during the past decades. The need to restore tissue loss secondary to trauma, fragility, tumour excision and debridement due to infection is ever growing. This increase demand is due to the fact that elderly people live longer (life span has increased) and there has been also improved survival rates of patients following treatment of neoplastic disease and severe traumatic injury.
Consequently, regeneration of tissues of the musculoskeletal system like skin, nerve, muscle, tendon, cartilage and bone amongst others continue to dominate the research area and the clinical environment. Work done on stem cells, growth factors, scaffolds, bioactive membranes, molecular mediators and advancements made in the fields of bioengineering, osteoimmunology, molecular medicine and biology, bioprinting, three-dimensional (3D) and four-dimensional (4D) structures, biomaterials, genetics and artificial intelligence have not only enhanced our knowledge of tissues and materials interactions but also the interrelationship of signalling pathways, regulatory networks, the extracellular space and cells interactions within the different tissue microenvironments, providing the foundation for novel therapeutic strategies and understanding better skeletal diseases.
We know now that there is widespread cross talk, specific mechanisms are indeed complex, and the networks of interaction are rather multifaceted. This can explain why a lot of successful treatment therapies in experiment models (small animal trials) never achieve the same positive results in the human microenvironment. Different approaches have been applied mostly focusing on manipulation of cell lineages and particularly stem cells for enhancing tissue regeneration in a timely fashion. Interestingly paracrine-generated extracellular vesicles carrying proteins, nucleic acids, inductive molecules, lipids, etc, in the extracellular space, affecting the local microenvironment, have given a new dimension to our strategies to restore the missing tissue and particularly the bone. In addition, 3-D bio-printed scaffolds provided an excellent foundation for cell homing, cell mitogenesis and differentiation to the tissue in need.
In this special issue of Regenerative and Orthobiologics Collection, all the included manuscripts provide the reader with some of the latest advances in the field of regenerative medicine. I hope it will provide an up-to-date knowledge to the clinicians to assist them to make the correct decisions in their practice dealing with difficult cases of tissue damage and need for regeneration.
It is an immense pleasure to have Professor Peter Giannoudis, ESTROT Founder and President in charge and Professor Taco Blokhuis, ESTROT Cofounder; in this collaborative work with JOOT.
