Abstract:

BACKGROUND: Many factors are expressed during bone formation and osteonosus, which can induce cartilage to transformed into bone, or induce periosteal cells to transform into chondrocytes.
OBJECTIVE: To summarize the osteogenic factors in recent years, and explore the important roles of these factors in bone formation and osteonosus.
METHODS: A computer-based online search of Medline database (2008-01/2009-07) and CNKI (2008-01/2009-07) was performed using the key words of “osteogenic factors, bone disease, bone formation, Intercellular Signaling Peptides and Proteins, osteogenesis” in English and “osteogenic factors, bone formation, bone disease, cytokine, stimulating factor” in Chinese. All the articles were limited to the English and Chinese languages. The content about the bone factors, bone formation or osteonosus was included. Repeated or old studies were excluded.
RESULTS AND CONCLUSION: According to the exclusion criteria, 158 literatures were collected and the roles of osteogenic factors in bone formation and osteonosus were analyzed. Bone formation and osteonosus are complex processes, influenced by many hormones and systemic or local growth factors. A variety of bone growth factors participate in process of bone healing and bone metabolism-related disease, which act on the target cells through local autocrine/paracrine mode and influence the distant target cells through blood circulation mode. A great number of factors are involved in the process of bone cell proliferation, differentiation, matrix synthesis and osteonosus metabolism, such as the fibroblast growth factor, bone morphogenetic protein, platelet-derived growth factor, transforming growth factor, interleukin-1, insulin-like growth factor, growth hormone etc.  Osteogenic factors play an important role in the process of bone formation and bone-related diseases. More and more factors have been used in clinical therapy and bone tissue engineering research, and their effects have been clinically proven.