“Bone Regeneration: Exploring a Plethora of Approaches”

Bone regeneration: 90% chance of self-healing total recovery; 10% of surgery with sometimes-catastrophic failure. The 'gold treatment' has not changed in the last century - harvesting the patient's own healthy bone to help the injured bone. This PhD thesis has investigated four novel approaches of bone regeneration. First, a method to increase collagen production by small molecules - collagen being good for bone regeneration. Second, a method to produce hypertrophic cartilage - the type of cartilage only existing in the youth, which stimulates bone growth. Third, a method to find suitable surfaces for cartilage/bone growth on medical devices. Finally, a novel tool for scientists to perform better bone research - a BMP-2 reporter cell line that reports BMP-2 gene expression.