Fig.
There is great enthusiasm for the use of biologic therapies to treat a range of musculoskeletal injuries and pathologies.1,2 The ability for mesenchymal stem cells (MSCs) to differentiate into multiple cell types and release pro-regenerative growth factors holds great promise for musculoskeletal tissue engineering.3,4 However, their clinical benefits are not yet clear. A large number of factors including donor variables, tissue source, processing and laboratory conditions, and pathology timing influence the effect of biologic therapies.5-7 Many emerging clinical trials evaluating biologics do not report sufficient scientific details, including processing and characterization, which may critically impact outcome.8 Inadequate reporting of scientific details limits the readers’ ability to interpret findings, makes replication by others challenging and prevents comparison across studies.9
To encourage improved reporting, minimum standards of reporting specific to stem cells have recently been developed.10 In an international effort by clinicians and scientists, a consensus on the minimum reporting guidelines for clinical studies evaluating MSCs was achieved using Delphi Consensus Methods (so called Minimum Information for Biologics or MIBO).10 Adoption of such checklists will help improve experimental transparency and repeatability, promote standardization and encourage a wider collaborative effort.
Open access
This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attributions licence (CC-BY-NC), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, but not for commercial gain, provided the original author and source are credited.
Iain Murray @MurraySportOrth
Andrew Murray @docandrewmurray
Jorge Chahla @jachahla
Robert LaPrade @thekneedoc
Follow us @BoneJointRes
None declared
None declared
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