Whether you are a competitive athlete or an older adult, strong bones are essential—not only for movement, but also for overall health. Now, a new study has shed new light on how our bones are maintained and repaired by stem cells—and how that process is disrupted with age and in situations of poor healing. The findings could open doors to therapies that speed recovery from injuries, improve bone health, and boost performance longevity.

“Stem cells are the source of all new bone formation, and so work like this is really the foundation of developing new treatments for conditions of poor skeletal health and delayed or impaired fracture regeneration,” said Thomas Ambrosi, who led this study while he was a postdoctoral fellow in Charles Chan’s laboratory at Stanford University and later in his current position as an assistant professor of Orthopedic Surgery at UC Davis. The study was published in Cell Stem Cell.

“This work exemplifies the mission of the Wu Tsai Human Performance Alliance to advance science that helps people stay healthy, recover faster, and achieve peak performance,” said Michael Longaker, MD, a senior author on the study, a professor in the School of Medicine at Stanford University, and a member of the Wu Tsai Human Performance Alliance at Stanford.