Abstract:

BACKGROUND: Four types scaffold materials in cartilage tissue engineering have been reported at present, they are natural polymers, synthetic biodegradable materials, new composite biomaterials of natural materials and natural polymers, and nano-materials.
OBJECTIVE: To summarize the literatures at home and abroad in recent years about scaffold materials in tissue engineering and to explore the problems and application prospects currently.
METHODS: A computer-based online search of literatures related to scaffold materials in cartilage tissue engineering from January 1997 to January 2011 was performed in PubMed database and CNKI database using the key words of “natural polymer materials, synthetic materials, new biological materials, nanometer materials, scaffold materials, cartilage tissue engineering” in English and in Chinese. A total of 33 literatures excluded repetitive studies were chosen to summarize.
RESULTS AND CONCLUSION: Single materials of tissue engineering are gradually replaced by composite materials which have higher pore porosity, lower antigenicity, better histocompatibility, and better abilities for adhesion and proliferation of chondrocytes. Biodegradable materials can be processed with exact shapes by computer-aided design and three-dimensional printing rapid prototyping technology. The future direction of development is to develop a type of biodegradable material which has an exact shape, a certain mechanical strength and appropriate aperture based on inner support scaffolds with slow rate of degradation.