Enhancement of bone formation and wound healing by stromal cell-derived factor-1 alpha in regenerative technique

Guided tissue regeneration (GTR) has been widely used to repair tissue defects in oral surgery. The healing tendency, however, won’t occur without enough tissue regenerative potential in wider range of defects. In the past, growth factors were added into bone graft to enhance tissue regeneration, but the use of growth factors still faces many problems. It is known that the growth factor can promote stem cell migration and differentiation. Attracting stem cells in order to promote tissue regeneration has become the main direction of development. Stromal cell-derived factor-1α (SDF-1α) is considered an important stem cell chemokine. Mesenchymal stem cells (MSCs), which are located in perivascular position, can generate SDF-1α to maintain the delivery and maturity of hematopoietic stem cells (HSCs); furthermore, promoting angiogenesis and bone regeneration are related. Literature has also been confirmed that SDF-1α has a positive impact on soft tissue and hard tissue healing, though most of the studies using SDF-1α protein as the research subject. Protein was restricted to the role of the short lasting time, safety and costly; therefore, the construction of SDF-1α plasmid to replace SDF-1α protein was done in this experiments. The experiment confirmed this plasmid DNA can release SDF-1α protein, moreover, it can attract stem cell migration as commercial SDF-1α protein does. In future prospect, it is expect to be able to use polyethyleneimine (PEI) transfection method to complete animal study, in order that SDF-1α plays to its advantages in regenerative technique of future clinical applications.