Abstract:

OBJECTIVE: To investigate the application of collagen materials as drug delivery carrier, and to search a new tissue engineered alternative.
METHODS: Using "tissue engineering, collagen materials, histocompatibility, drug delivery carrier, clinical application” in Chinese as the key words, a computer search was performed in VIP database (http://www.cqvip.com/) and Pubmed database (http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/PubMed) between January 1993 and October 2009 for articles about the collagen materials applied in drug delivery. The repeated study or Meta analysis articles were excluded. Totally 25 articles focusing on collagen-based materials in the drug delivery carrier were involved in further analysis.
RESULTS: Clinical application of collagen material is involved in skin damage repair, cartilage damage repair and wound bleeding, etc., as well as constructing myocardial tissue as tissue engineering scaffolds. Collagen materials have high tensile strength, biodegradability, low antigenicity, low irritant and low cell toxicity, also can promote cell growth. Therefore collagen is an ideal biomedical material and drug carrier. As the half life of growth factor is usually short, and collagen cannot directly serve as a growth factor delivery carrier because of its good water-solubility. Lactic acid/glycolic acid copolymer has been widely used in the construction of sustained-release carrier due to water insolubility, good biocompatibility and biodegradability.
CONCLUSION: Although the collagen material is an ideal biomedical material and drug carrier, it exhibits different effects in a variety of clinical applications and drug carriers, which is due to many insolvable problems in the construction of sustained-release vector. The natural biological materials are the current hot spot, but how to make collagen materials meet drug carrier requirements is an urgent need to solve the vector construction, and ultimately fully apply collagen material and achieve the goal of tissue repair.