Abstract:

BACKGROUND: There is an increasing number of reports addressing the reconstruction of various urinary organs, such as the bladder, urethra, ureter and corpus cavernosum penis, by using tissue engineering approaches, and scaffold materials have great significance in the reconstruction.
OBJECTIVE: To summarize the current development of scaffold materials in tissue engineering repair and reconstruction for urinary organs based on the recent literatures.
METHODS: An online search was conducted in Pubmed database and CNKI database to identify the articles related to scaffolds biomaterials in urology published from January 2003 to November 2009 using the key words of “tissue engineering, biomaterials, urethra, bladder, urology” in English and “tissue engineering, scaffolds, urethra, bladder, urinary tract” in Chinese. Inclusive criterion: The contents of articles were related to the application of tissue engineered scaffolds in urology, those published recently or in authorized journals are preferred as for the same field.
RESULTS AND CONCLUSION: Using biological materials as tissue engineering scaffold for organ repair and reconstruction is currently the main areas of urinary system tissue engineering research, a variety of natural, artificial and composite materials have used in animal experiments or clinical applications, in particular the recent development and application of nanotechnology has opened up a new way for tissue engineering, therefore, it is a promising direction of urinary system tissue engineering scaffold materials that selecting alternative materials of similar physico-chemical property and ultrastructure.