Editorial
Copyright ©The Author(s) 2015. Published by Baishideng Publishing Group Inc. All rights reserved.
World J Orthop. Nov 18, 2015; 6(10): 754-761
Published online Nov 18, 2015. doi: 10.5312/wjo.v6.i10.754
Orthopedic cellular therapy: An overview with focus on clinical trials
Moon Jong Noh, Kwan Hee Lee
Moon Jong Noh, Kwan Hee Lee, TissueGene, Inc., Rockville, MD 20850, United States
Author contributions: Noh MJ wrote this article; Lee KH designed and decided the contents of the article.
Conflict-of-interest statement: Both authors are employees of TissueGene, Inc. TissueGene, Inc. will pay the fees for publication and editing this paper. TissueGene, Inc. owns the right to protect the commercialization of InvossaTM.
Open-Access: This article is an open-access article which was selected by an in-house editor and fully peer-reviewed by external reviewers. It is distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial (CC BY-NC 4.0) license, which permits others to distribute, remix, adapt, build upon this work non-commercially, and license their derivative works on different terms, provided the original work is properly cited and the use is non-commercial. See: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/
Correspondence to: Kwan Hee Lee, MD, PhD, Chief Medical Officer, TissueGene, Inc., 9605 Medical Center Drive, Suite 200, Rockville, MD 20850, United States. ortholee@tissuegene.com
Telephone: +1-301-9216000-101 Fax: +1-301-9216011
Received: May 22, 2015
Peer-review started: May 22, 2015
First decision: July 10, 2015
Revised: August 22, 2015
Accepted: September 25, 2015
Article in press: September 28, 2015
Published online: November 18, 2015
Processing time: 174 Days and 5.9 Hours
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.