image: Personalized bone tissue engineering process. Autologous mesenchymal stem cells (MSCs) from fat aspirates and CT images were obtained for each animal subject. The anatomical scaffold was fabricated from the bovine stifle bone that had been processed to remove any cellular material while preserving the tissue matrix. The cells were seeded into the scaffold and cultured in the specially designed perfusion bioreactor. After 3 weeks, the engineered ramus-condyle unit (RCU) was implanted back into the pig for 6 months. This material relates to a paper that appeared in the June 15, 2016 issue of Science Translational Medicine, published by AAAS. The paper, by S. Bhumiratana at Columbia University in New York, NY, and colleagues was titled, "Tissue-engineered autologous grafts for facial bone reconstruction." view more
Credit: S. Bhumiratana <i>et al., Science Translational Medicine</i> (2016)