Orthopedic cellular therapy: An overview with focus on clinical trials

Abstract

In this editorial, the authors tried to evaluate the present state of cellular therapy in orthopedic field. The topics the authors try to cover include not only the clinical trials but the various research areas as well. Both the target diseases for cellular therapy and the target cells were reviewed. New methods to activate the cells were interesting to review. Most advanced clinical trials were also included because several of them have advanced to phase III clinical trials. In the orthopedic field, there are many diseases with a definite treatment gap at this time. Because cellular therapies can regenerate damaged tissues, there is a possibility for cellular therapies to become disease modifying drugs. It is not clear whether cellular therapies will become the standard of care in any of the orthopedic disorders, however the amount of research being performed and the number of clinical trials that are on-going make the authors believe that cellular therapies will become important treatment modalities within several years.

Keywords: Orthopedics, Cellular therapy, Treatment gap, Disease modifying drugs, Standard of care

Core tip: The use of cellular therapies for the treatment of orthopedic diseases is one of the pioneering developments in the history of medical research. Many papers have reported on basic research on cellular sources and methods to localize the cells. Although many review articles have been published, papers discussing clinical trial status were not always available. The authors attempted to review not only the research status of cellular therapy but the status of clinical trials which are on-going in the United States. We hope this editorial can help orthopedic surgeons in keeping up to date in their knowledge of clinical and research stage cellular therapy.