Abstract:

OBJECTIVE: To summarize the major biomaterials and research progress for the repair of ligament injury, to emphasize the type of ligament injury, to evaluate the properties and applications of various biomaterials for tissue engineered scaffolds applied in the repair of sports ligament injury, and to find a reasonable tissue engineered ligament scaffold.
METHODS: A computer research of PubMed database and Wanfang database between January 1999 and July 2010 was performed for articles about biological materials applied in tissue engineered ligament scaffolds, using the Chinese key words of “ligament reconstruction, bio-materials, artificial ligaments, tissue engineering, scaffolds” and English Keywords of “cruciate ligament, LARS artificial ligament, ligament reconstruction”. Duplicated research, reviews or Meta analysis were excluded, finally 19 articles were involved in the evaluation.
RESULTS: The selection and biocompatibility of scaffolds for tissue engineering have been discussed, although the present study has achieved great progress, it is still only in the initial stage, and long away from large-scale clinical application.
CONCLUSION: The natural and synthetic polymer scaffolds for tissue engineering have its own advantages and disadvantages, most are still in the research stage and have not been applied to clinical practice, so improving their performance as a scaffold is one of the future study directions.