Stem cell is so noticeable for its great application prospect in many fields such as regenerative medicine, biomaterials science, geriatrics, and neuroscience. However, there is little research concentrating on the field of orthopedics relatively. With the development of multiagency tissue engineering science, stem cells are more and more important in orthopedics.

We all know the importance of tissue engineering in bony remodeling, bone repair, osteogenesis, and regeneration of degenerative disease. There were three key factors in tissue engineering including materials, cells, and cytokines. We pay close attention to the factor of “cells.” Beyond all question, stem cells is the optimal choice in this field for its excellent self-renewal ability, multiple differentiation potential, antiaging resistance, and availability. In orthopedics department, we receive many trauma patients with severe bone defect and fracture; we hope that osteoprogenitor cells can be reserved for bone repair. After all, the biological behaviour of stem cells is so important and needs more scientific research.

It is exciting that, with the deepening of research, more categories of mesenchymal stem cells were discovered. Intervertebral disc stem cells are one of the endogenous stem cells. These stem cells can be a potential target spot to put off the degeneration process of intervertebral disc and even take part in the process of regeneration in spine degenerative disease. Degenerative osteoarthritis is also a disease that causes severe economic burden and affects quality of life as well as intervertebral disc degeneration. Chondrostem cells are an extensive and in-depth study of endogenous mesenchymal stem cells and understanding the biological behavior, survival mode, differentiation potential and method of regulation and control of chondrostem cells may bring positive meaning of degenerative osteoarthritis.

It is worth mentioning that tumor stem cell is also a new field of bone tumor. Literature reports that osteosarcoma stem cells play an important role in tumor development and progression. Control methods of tumor stem cells and understanding their manner of death may provide a new way to find out the way of growth and mortality of tumor.

Although stem cells have been explored more, meaningful things need deeper research to demonstrate their magic. Stem cells have the ability of self-renewal, multidirectional differentiation, regeneration, and repair and these features determine their importance in degeneration disease and bone trauma. Bone tumor may also be controlled if tumour stem cells are studied more deeply. Therefore, we can predict that stem cells have broad prospect in orthopedics.

Potential topics include but are not limited to the following:

• Recent development of stem cells in bone and cartilage regeneration
• Signal regulation of stem cells
• Application of stem cells in regeneration of cartilage
• Application of stem cells in regeneration of bone