Abstract:

BACKGROUND: Cartilage repair material requires specific biochemical and physical properties, such as strong biocompatibility, appropriate biodegradability, controllable pore size, and sufficient porosity.
OBJECTIVE: To compare and analyze the characteristics of various cartilage repair materials.
METHODS: A computer-based retrieval of Wanfang and CNKI databases from 2001 to 2010 was performed for articles about the cartilage repair materials, by using key words of “cartilage, repair, scaffold, tissue engineering, biomaterials” in Chinese.
RESULTS AND CONCLUSIONS: Cartilage tissue engineering scaffold materials include natural scaffolds, composite scaffolds, injectable scaffolds, biomimetic scaffolds and so on. But these materials have their advantages and disadvantages, the commonly used are composite scaffolds, biomimetic scaffolds prepared according to preparation biomimetic principles, or injectable scaffolds, in order to give full play to the advantage and overcome the shortcomings, thus biomechanical properties are closer to that of natural bone tissue. Although bone tissue engineering researches have made considerable progress and achievements, there are still many problems to be solved, such as the immunogenicity of the scaffolds that is the influence of degradation and turnover on the body; the possibility of effective integration between scaffolds and subchondral bone; whether the degradation rate of scaffold materials in line with tissue formation; the biomechanical properties of the scaffold are close to or similar with that of cartilage.