Abstract:

BACKGROUND: There is slow progress in the reconstruction and clinical application of tissue-engineered lung because of the difficulty in the identification and utilization of cell sources, development of standardized procedures for cell differentiation, control of extracellular matrix production to meet the needs of the lung and so on.
OBJECTIVE: To review the identification and utilization of cell sources and the replacement of extracellular matrix in the tissue-engineered lung research.
METHODS: A computer-based online search of China Journal Full-text Database and PubMed was performed for articles and reviews in Chinese and English from 1989 to 2011. The key words were “tissue-engineered lung, cell source, support scaffolding, lung matrices, vivo implantation”. Screened following reading titles and abstracts, relevant literatures were included. Repetitive articles with poor quality were excluded. A total of 72 articles were retrieved. Finally, 36 literatures were included.
RESULTS AND CONCLUTION: New functional replacement lung tissue can be generated through tissue engineering in the use of cell sources and related support scaffolding under a certain condition, but it is still at the basic research stage. With the development of the techniques in the tissue-engineered lung, there will be more and more new discovery. The recent clinical use and success of decellularized trachea suggests that tissue-engineered lung may be the best choice for lung diseases in the future.