Skeletal stem-cell therapy: challenge meets opportunity

The prevalence of skeletal diseases (eg, osteoporosis) increases with age, resulting in pain and loss of mobility and imposing a major social and economic burden on health-care systems worldwide.1 Bones at different sites in the body are not made of the same tissue. Bones in each location also differ in their associated developmental and degenerative disorders, which makes skeletal disease therapies challenging. Therefore, there is an urgent need for improving the precision of treatment strategies at specific pathological sites of skeletal diseases.