Improved performance of aging human mesenchymal stromal cells for bone tissue engineering

In the last decades, an improvement in general life conditions has led to an increace in human life span but, concomitantly, also led to an increasing incidence of bone related disorders. A substancial effort has been placed in the development of new techologies to overcome current limitations of regenerative medicine. Human mesenchymal stromal cells (hMSCs) emerge as the golden standard for cell-based applications and are expected not only to increase current available therapies, but also, to allow the treatment of pathologies that, currently, have few accepted treatments or no cure. While hopes are high that many age-related degenerative diseases will be cured by stem cell therapy, there are still some hurdles that need to be addressed. Therefore, this thesis aims at improving hMSCs performance by using a diversified approach.