Adult bone marrow stem cells in cartilage therapy.

Cartilage defect rarely heals spontaneously since cartilage tissue is poorly vascularized and the lesion usually does not penetrate to subchondral bone, and hence it does not have access to progenitor cells of bone marrow. Severe cartilage damage may lead to osteoarthritis (OA). Current surgical and non-surgical therapeutic interventions in OA are limited to symptom relief and/or repair of focal lesion, and later a total knee replacement is still necessary. Cell therapy with chondrocyte implantation requires healthy cartilage for donor of the cells. Adult mesenchymal stem cells (MSCs) have the ability to differentiate into chondrogenic lineage. They can readily be isolated from bone marrow as well as many other adult tissues and have an extensive proliferation capacity. Therefore, MSCs may offer a great potential to be developed as an alternative for cell-based articular cartilage therapy.