Investigation Of Bone Marrow Stem Cells In The Bone Marrow Niche In An In Vitro System

P. Lezuo, M. Stoddart, and M. Alini
AO Research Institute, Davos, Grison, Switzerland
Published in 2010

We aim to develop an in vitro culture system to mimic the human bone marrow stem cell niche in an artificial perfusion bioreactor environment to culture human adult stem cells. State of the art human bone marrow stem cell research shows that even smallest changes in the physical, thermo dynamical or biochemical environment induce a differentiation of human bone marrow stem cells into other cell lines like e.g. fibroblasts or osteoblasts which is undesirable for bone marrow stem cell maintenance in vitro. This new system modeled using COMSOL gives a new insight into the bone marrow stem cell niche concerning the cell development for maintenance as well as for proliferation. Additionally we aim to investigate how the bone marrow stem cells are initially activated and at which point in the cell development the differentiation process outweigh the plain proliferation process. This project will lead to a valuable and reproducible source of stem cells for musculoskeletal repair.

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