Abstract:

BACKGROUND: Articular cartilage defects are very common in clinic. With the development of molecular biology and tissue engineering, there are many new methods to repair articular cartilage defects. In recent years, the researches on repairs of articular cartilage defects with the cartilage tissue engineering method have obtained the satisfactory curative effect.
OBJECTIVE: To summarize and discuss the studies addressing repairs of articular cartilage defects with the cartilage tissue engineering methods.
METHODS: The first author searched relevant literature from CNKI (2000/2010) and Medline database (1990/2010). The key words were “articular cartilage defects, cartilage tissue engineering” in Chinese or English. Totally 786 articles were retrieved, and finally 47 articles were included. From aspects of seed cells, scaffold materials and biological factors, we generalized articles about the repairs of in the repair of articular cartilage defects with the cartilage tissue engineering methods.
RESULTS AND CONCLUSION: Scaffold, seed cells and biological factor are the three main elements of cartilage tissue engineering. The cartilage tissue engineering methods refer to implantation of in vitro cultured and proliferated seed cells onto the scaffolds to form tissue-engineered bone induced by relevant regulatory factors. The results show that the cartilage tissue engineering has become one of the important methods for the treatment of articular cartilage defects. Although the treatment of articular cartilage defects has obtained a good effect, there is not a widely recognized treatment program until now. Growth factors, such as bone morphogenetic protein and transforming growth factor β, can play a combined role in chondrocytes in autocrine and paracrine manners and can be intertwined to form a network, showing a temporal-spatial distribution. The use of new composite scaffolds to repair articular cartilage defects will become the main direction for future researches.