Abstract:

BACKGROUND: For the composition and preparation of tissue engineering scaffolds materials which is the carrier of seed cells, two or more kinds of complementary scaffolds materials were synthesized to improve the lack of a single material and retain the characteristics of raw materials, which makes the composite scaffolds more and more popular.
OBJECTIVE: By analyzing and summarizing the research which adopts composite scaffolds to repair spinal cord injury since 1998, we devote to find suitable new spinal cord tissue engineering composite materials and their applicable standards.
METHODS: Articles addressing spinal cord tissue engineering were retrieved from VIP database and Pubmed database with the key words of “scaffold, spinal cord injury” between January 1998 and December 2009. The literature of irrelevant purpose and repetitive content were excluded, and then 30 literatures were included for final analysis.
RESULTS AND CONCLUSION: An ideal composite biological scaffold should have good biocompatibility, biodegradable, high porosity and mechanical strength, but also with appropriate stiffness, permeability, swelling, degradation rate and the axon guidance function. The existing single-material scaffold is difficult to have these properties simultaneously, so the complex mix of different materials is a feasible way to resolve this problem. The obtained composite scaffold materials must have great biocompatibility, which could influence neuraxon regeneration and structure. An evaluation of permeability in varying molecules was a key factor to determine input of nutritive materials and output of metabolic waste. Expansion of scaffold should be understood under spinal cord water environment, because the expansion might press regenerated nerve. Recently, an exactly suitable scaffold is still searching to treat spinal cord injury.