Bone Morphogenetic Protein-2(BMP-2) has a high potential to induce the differentiation of mesenchymal stem cells to osteogenic cells. Moreover, recombinant BMP-2 protein can induce bone formation in many animal models for bone regeneration therapy. However, it is not successfully used for bone regeneration therapy clinically. Therefore, we have tried to delivery bmp-2 gene into the target site safely and efficiently. We constructed non-viral vectors: pCAGGS-bmp-2 for our gene transfer system, pCAGGS can express external genes temporarily at the injection site. Therefore, we considered that our pCAGGS constructs could be applied to the regeneration of periodontal tissues such as alveolar bone.
In this study, we applied our pCAGGS-bmp-2 construct for alveolar bone regeneration by transferring it to the periodontal tissues of rats. We evaluated the potency for alveolar bone regeneration by bone morpho metric analyses as mineral apposition rate (MAR) and primary and secondary parameters. We revealed that MAR and parameters increased after bmp-2 gene transfer at the target site of the alveolar bone.