Bone is a tissue with relatively excellent regenerating powers, yet 10% of bone fractures are unable to heal on their own and will require transplantation or stem-cell therapies, posing a considerable medical and economic burden. Furthermore, some congenital craniofacial abnormalities, which account for one-third of all congenital deformities in human populations, necessitate extensive maxillofacial surgery and repair.

Regenerative medicine has made remarkable progress in developing therapies and approaches to improve tissue repair in patients. Nevertheless, the community needs standardized methods and procedures to study bone biology and regeneration. Topics of interest include:

1. Bone and cartilage staining protocols to characterize mutant phenotypes
2. Imaging techniques such as live intravital imaging, micro-computed tomography, and quantitative analyses to understand the cellular mechanisms associated with bone formation and regeneration
3. Protocols for isolating and characterizing skeletal cells during homeostasis and tissue repair

A collection of standardized methods optimized by experts in their field will increase our knowledge of bone development and repair, paving the way to engineer better regenerative therapies for humans suffering from traumatic injuries.