Abstract:

BACKGROUND: As the carrier of seed cells in tissue engineering scaffolds, nano-materials is exerting an increasingly important role in repair of spinal cord injury due to unique effects such as favorable cell adhesion and proliferation.
OBJECTIVE: To analyze and summarize the literatures abour spinal cord injury repair using nano-scaffold materials published in recent years, and to search for a suitable nano-material and its applicable standards for spinal cord tissue engineering.
METHODS: A computer-based search was performed in September, 2010 by the first author among PubMed database, Wanfang database and VIP database. English data retrieval time was from 2000 to 2009; Chinese data retrieval time was from January 2003 to August 2010. English key words were “nanometer scaffold; materials; spinal cord injury; repair; tissue engineering”; Chinese key words were “nano-scaffold, biomaterials, spinal cord injury, repair, tissue engineering”. Inclusion criteria: ① nano-scaffold preparation technology and properties. ② tissue engineering repair spinal cord injury. ③ animal experiments and clinical applications. After reading and screening, 30 articles were included in the final analysis.
RESULTS AND CONCLUSION: Compared with the traditional scaffolds, nano-scaffolds have good bio-degradable performance, no immunogenicity, plasticity and excellent mechanical properties, so that the scaffold is potentially applied in the field of tissue engineering. With the development of nanotechnology, the manufacturing technique optimization, the introduction of genetic engineering, and the scientific evaluation of nano-materials’ safety will be the challenges for future clinical application of tissue engineering nano-scaffold materials.