Figure 1.

Bone perfusion is a rate‐limiting step in bone formation, and hence, healing. We hypothesized that, in a murine calvarial lesion model, administration of recombinant human relaxin would increase circulating bone marrow derived angio‐/osteogenic progenitor cells and enhance their uptake into the lesion site promoting vasculogenesis and bone formation, while concurrently stimulating angiogenesis, vasodilation, and bone formation by direct effects on osteoblasts. This study was not supportive of a beneficial role for recombinant human relaxin delivered either systemically or locally via collagen scaffolds applied to the lesions.