FGF signaling
Fibroblast growth factors — potent proliferative signals with a dual role in bone.
The fibroblast growth factor family comprises more than twenty ligands signalling through four receptor types, with roles spanning development, wound repair, and angiogenesis. FGF-2 (basic FGF) is the most studied in tissue engineering: strongly mitogenic for mesenchymal cells and a potent stimulus for new vessel growth.
Its role in bone is genuinely dual, and instructive. FGF-2 expands the progenitor pool — useful early — but sustained FGF signalling can suppress the terminal differentiation that BMPs drive. Proliferation and differentiation are to a degree opposing programmes, so a factor that is beneficial in one phase can be counterproductive in the next. That makes FGF a clear argument for sequential release rather than simultaneous delivery.
Human genetics again supplies the evidence: activating mutations in FGFR3 cause achondroplasia, and FGFR mutations underlie craniosynostosis syndromes — pathology with direct bearing on Craniofacial tissue engineering.
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