Bone Tissue engineering (BTE) has recently been introduced as an alternative to conventional treatments for large non-healing bone defects. BTE approaches mimic autologous bone grafts, by combining cells, scaffold, and growth factors, and have the added benefit of being able to manipulate these constituents to optimize healing. Electrical stimulation (ES) has long been used to successfully treat non-healing fractures and has recently been shown to stimulate bone cells to migrate, proliferate, align, differentiate, and adhere to bio compatible scaffolds, all cell behaviors that could improve BTE treatment outcomes. With the above in mind we performed in vitro experiments and demonstrated that exposing Mesenchymal Stem Cells (MSC) + scaffold to ES for 3 weeks resulted in significant increases in osteogenic differentiation. Then in in vivo experiments, for the first time, we demonstrated that exposing BTE treated rat femur large defects to ES for 8 weeks, caused improved healing, as indicated by increased bone formation, strength, vessel density, and osteogenic gene expression. Our results demonstrate that ES significantly increases osteogenic differentiation in vitro and that this effect is translated into improved healing in vivo. These findings support the use of ES to help BTE treatments achieve their full therapeutic potential.

中文翻译：

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将电刺激与组织工程相结合以治疗大鼠模型中的大骨缺损。

最近，已经引入了骨组织工程学（BTE），作为常规疗法的替代方案，用于治疗无法愈合的大骨缺损。BTE通过结合细胞，支架和生长因子来模仿自体骨移植，并具有能够操纵这些成分以优化愈合的额外好处。电刺激（ES）长期以来一直用于成功治疗无法愈合的骨折，最近已显示出刺激骨细胞迁移，增殖，排列，分化并粘附于生物相容性支架上，所有可改善BTE治疗结果的细胞行为。考虑到上述情况，我们进行了体外实验，并证明了将间充质干细胞（MSC）+支架暴露于ES 3周导致成骨分化显着增加。然后，在体内实验中，我们首次证明将BTE处理的大鼠股骨大缺陷暴露于ES 8周，可改善愈合情况，这由增加的骨形成，强度，血管密度和成骨基因表达所表明。我们的结果表明，ES可以显着提高体外成骨细胞的分化，并且这种作用可转化为体内改善的愈合。这些发现支持使用ES来帮助BTE治疗发挥其全部治疗潜力。我们的结果表明，ES可以显着提高体外成骨细胞的分化，并且这种作用可转化为体内改善的愈合。这些发现支持使用ES来帮助BTE治疗发挥其全部治疗潜力。我们的结果表明，ES可以显着提高体外成骨细胞的分化，并且这种作用可转化为体内改善的愈合。这些发现支持使用ES来帮助BTE治疗发挥其全部治疗潜力。