title: Harnessing the power of macrophages/monocytes for enhanced bone tissue engineering.
abstract: Bone tissue engineering has attracted considerable attention as a promising treatment modality for severe bone degeneration. The pressing need for more sophisticated and fully functional bone substitutes has spurred a refocus on the development of bone constructs in a way more comparable to the physiological process. Current research is increasingly revealing the central roles of macrophages/monocytes in regulating bone development and repair, so we propose that these immunocytes can play a similar pivotal role in directing engineered bone regeneration. Accordingly, we discuss two possible strategies to exemplify how the distinctive power of macrophages/monocytes--particularly their cytokine-secretion ability and chemotactic response to foreign materials--can be harnessed to enhance the performance of bone tissue engineering applications.
authors.affiliation: State Key Laboratory of Pharmaceutical Biotechnology, School of Life Sciences, Nanjing University, 22 Hankou Road, Nanjing 210093, China.
authors.forename: Lei
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Dong
authors.forename: Chunming
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Wang
mesh_terms: D001846:Bone Development; D001842:Bone and Bones / Q000166:cytology*; D006801:Humans; D008264:Macrophages / Q000502:physiology*; D009000:Monocytes / Q000502:physiology*; D023822:Tissue Engineering / Q000379:methods*