Abstract:

BACKGROUND: When a more than 6-cm trachea is removed, the anastomotic fistula would occur due to great tension, thus, trachea reconstruction should be performed. However, the therapeutic effect of allograft transplantation, autotransplantation, and artificial substitutes are unsatisfactory. Tissue engineering is a developing research spot in recent years, and tissue-engineered trachea has exhibits favorable prospect in treating anastomotic fistula.
OBJECTIVE: To understand the composition and construction method of tissue-engineered trachea from the aspects of scaffold materials, seed cells, growth factor, reconstruction of stereochemical structure, and clinical applications.
METHODS: The databases of VIP, Pubmed and Elsevier were searched by computer with the key words of “tracheal transplantation and tissue-engineered trachea”. The articles related to construction method of tissue-engineered trachea and published between 2000 and 2009 were selected. The repetitive literatures were excluded.
RESULTS AND CONCLUSION: Totally 279 literatures were initial searched, and 30 articles were included for further study. Currently, most of scaffold for tissue-engineered trachea were made from synthetic materials, and nano-material was thought to be the most potential material. Seed cells were resourced from chondrocytes and tracheal epithelial cells. Tissue-engineered trachea chondrocytes could be constructed in vitro by using rotary cell culture system, and the adding of growth factors could induce, accelerate and enhance chondrosis. Tissue-engineered trachea has widely prospect for its less donor tissue and free from rejection. However, there are still problems encounter its application.