Abstract:

BACKGROUND: With the development of biotechnology, repairing bone defects using tissue engineered bone has become a hot spot.
OBJECTIVE: To overview the research progress and clinical applications of repairing bone defects with tissue engineered bone.
METHODS: The databases of PubMed, Springer Link, and Science Direct were retrieved for papers published from January 2000 to March 2009 with key words of “tissue engineering of bone, bone defect, and clinical applications”. The relevant papers concerning stem cell, scaffold material, animal model, vascularization during repairing bone defects with tissue engineered bone were collected.
RESULTS AND CONCLUSION: Bone defect reparation has been a clinical challenge. The traditional autogenous bone transplantation was the gold standard for local bone defects, which had drawback of complication. It is an ideal technique that applying allogeneic bone scaffolds without number restrictions to repair bone defects, which had possibility of rejection reaction and infection. Therefore, the applications of tissue engineered bone are the tendency. The tissue engineered bone comprised 4 key elements: bone conductive scaffolds, releasing osteogenic growth factor, loaded osteogenic potential cells, as well as vascularization. Thus, the factors involved in osteanagenesis and its relations, as well as animal model studies should be evaluated during bone defects reparation. There have been shown positive roles and considerable development prospects of tissue engineered bone, but many issues have to be solved before the clinical applications.