BACKGROUND:Aside from iron chelating,deferoxamine is also considered as an effective hypoxia mimetic agent and hypoxia inducible factor-1α stabilizer.Deferoxamine has played a favorable effect on bone regeneration in both basic and clinical research recently.Deferoxamine solutions or deferoxamine loaded bio-scaffolds have been locally applied in bone tissue engineering,and their promotion of bone repair involves various functional properties and molecular mechanisms which have not been entirely clarified.Moreover,their advances in research of bone regeneration lack comprehensive summary as well. OBJECTIVE:To review the functional properties,relative merits and advances in basic research and clinical practice of deferoxamine applied in bone regeneration,attempting to provide references and strategies for further studies. METHODS:Relevant articles were searched with the key words of"deferoxamine OR desferrioxamine OR desferal OR DFO,""bone tissue engineering OR bone regeneration OR bone remodeling OR bone repair OR bone healing OR osteogenesis,""angiogenesis OR vascularized bone regeneration OR angiogenic-osteogenic coupling"in English and Chinese by using PubMed,WanFang and CNKI databases.Eventually,88 articles were selected for review. RESULTS AND CONCLUSION:Deferoxamine can recruit stem cells and regulate their function,activate relevant signaling pathways to advance hypoxia adaptation of the cells,exert anti-inflammatory and antioxidant properties to improve local inflammatory environment,and promote bone regeneration by coupling osteogenesis and angiogenesis as well as inhibiting bone resorption.Compared with growth factors or peptides loaded in conventional bone tissue engineering,deferoxamine has its unique advantages as a small molecule drug,while it also has toxic reactions and application limitations.Therefore,it is necessary to optimize its loading form and dosagey.The unique angiogenic-osteogenic coupling ability of deferoxamine can be used in different types of bone injuries including fractures,osteonecrosis,distraction osteogenesis,bone grafting,oral related osteogenesis,and bone defects.Due to the enhancement of angiogenesis,this ability enables deferoxamine to better adapt and solve the difficulties in bone repair caused by the complex and variable clinical situations and individual differences.However,it is also necessary to compare and optimize the application methods and safe dosage of deferoxamine to expand its application scope and enhance its clinical value.