There is significant interest among spine surgeons for a bone graft substitute that could be used during lumbar spine surgery to help facilitate fusion and thereby eliminate the need to harvest a patient’s own bone.  In this episode, Dr. Robert Johnson, a spine surgeon based in San Antonio, Texas, talks about his ongoing study using autologous adult stem cells to facilitate spinal fusion instead of using bone harvested from a patient’s pelvis, which may create two potential problems: (1) graft site morbidity (complications may include bleeding, infection, and chronic pain at the donor site in the pelvis); and (2) failure to fuse.  These are the two primary reasons that there is great interest in creating a bone graft mechanism for use in a spine fusion procedure instead of using a patient’s own bone.