Follistatin, Nell1, CCN2 and HMGB1 for bone repair in vitro

Treatment of large bone defects in the craniomaxillofacial or axial skeleton is a challenging process. The gold standard treatment involving harvesting of bone from another anatomical location of the patient, can lead to donor site morbidity, increased pain, cost and recovery time. The ideal therapy would use cell free materials to fill the defect combined with chemical agents that induce and instruct bone defect repair by the cells of the patient. This would avoid the costly stages of cell harvesting and preparation under Good Manufacturing Practice conditions associated with cell therapy based approaches. Here we describe the assessment of the ability of 4 proteins, Follistatin (FST), Nell1, Connective Tissue Growth Factor (CTGF/CCN2) and High Mobility Group Box 1 (HMGB1) to induce osteogenic differentiation and migration of osteoprogenitors as a model for the recruitment and differentiation of resident cells.