Abstract:

BACKGROUND: Soft-tissue defect in plastic surgery is a major problem, and currently all of methods used for clinical treatment have certain shortcomings.
OBJECTIVE: To investigate the research status of adipose tissue engineering, to analyze the current deficiencies in the application of the program, and to outlook its possible future in clinical application.
METHODS: A computer-based online search was conducted in Medline and CNKI with the key words of “adipose tissue engineering, mesenchymal stem cells, derived from adipose tissue” in both Chinese and English from January 1991 to May 2009. The related articles about fat tissue and tissue-engineered building were included, but the duplicated studies were excluded.
RESULTS AND CONCLUSION: A total of 342 documents were retrieved firstly. According to the inclusion criteria, 33 articles were included in the final analysis. During the exploration of treatment for soft-tissue defect, tissue engineering technology provided a new method by combining the seed cells amplifying in vitro with biomaterial to repair some tissue or organ defects, reconstruct physiological function, and finally to achieve the ultimate goal of non-damage repairment of organic defect and reconstruction of morphology, structure and function. Nowadays there are several successful strategies of constructing adipose tissue in treatment for soft tissue defect, which will fill in the blanks in the repairment of adipose tissue defect.