Abstract:

OBJECTIVE: To evaluate the properties and applications of various biological materials for tissue engineering repair of skull defects, and to find a reasonable alternative to the skull.
METHODS: By using of “tissue engineering, tissue engineering blood vessels, stem cells, cytokines, scaffolds” for the Chinese keywords and “tissue engineering, tissue engineering blood vessel, intravascular stent” for the English keywords, a computer search was performed among articles published between January 1993 and October 2009. Articles related to the biological materials and tissue engineering blood vessel were included; repeated study or Meta analysis articles were excluded. Thirty articles mainly focused on types and properties of tissue engineering blood vessel materials.
RESULTS: The vascular acellular matrix can be used as an ideal scaffold for vascular tissue engineering application. Fibrin-made scaffold not only has good biocompatibility, biodegradability and high affinity, but also promotes angiogenesis and tissue repair. Gelatin has no antigenicity and exhibits good biocompatibility, it can be completely biodegraded and can support themselves to achieve vascularization. Natural biological materials and synthetic polymer materials all have some deficiencies, according to certain method the two materials combine into a complex matrix and can play their advantages to construct tissue engineering blood vessels with good performance. Nano-modification technology is expected to be applied to the next generation of tissue engineered vascular grafts.
CONCLUSION: No ideal vascular scaffold materials have been found. Although natural biological materials are the current research hotspot, their mechanical properties cannot well match the scaffold requirements, thus new materials are urgently needed to better meet the requirements of engineered vascular scaffold and to achieve the goal of repair and reconstruction .