Abstract:

OBJECTIVE: To summarize the main tissue engineered scaffold materials for tendon injury repair and research progress.
METHODS: A computer-based online search of CNKI database from January 1902 to October 2010 was performed by the first author to retrieve studies on the biomaterials used for tissue engineered tendon scaffolds, with key words of “tendon reconstruction, biological materials, artificial tendons, tissue engineering, scaffold materials” in Chinese. Duplicated research, reviews or Meta analysis were excluded, finally 18 articles were selected into the evaluation.
RESULTS: The natural biomaterials include silk, small intestinal submucosa, collagen, derivative tendon scaffold and so on, normal three-dimensional network structure of the tissue is retained, tissue compatibility is good, but mechanical properties are poor and degradation speed is fast. Synthetic polymer materials primarily consist of polylactic acid and polyglycolic acid, polylactic acid-polyglycolic acid copolymer, polyphosphoric acid calcium fibers and so on, but they are low hydrophilic and poor performance of cell adhesion.
CONCLUSION: The natural and synthetic polymer scaffolds for tissue engineering has its own advantages and disadvantages, most of them are still in the research stage and have not been applied to clinical practice, so improving the performance of scaffolds is one of the main directions of current research.