ABSTRACT
BACKGROUND: The clinical treatment of bone defects is facing many problems. In order to solve the problem, the development of scaffold materials for bone tissue engineering has been an issue of concern. OBJECTIVE: To review the clinical application and development prospect of biological scaffold materials and mesenchymal stem cells in bone tissue engineering. METHODS: PubMed and CNKI databases were retrieved for the articles regarding bone tissue engineering published from January 2000 to December 2016. The key words were "bone tissue engineering; biological scaffold; mesenchymal stem cells" in English and Chinese, respectively. Articles addressing biological scaffolds and mesenchymal stem cells were included, except for repetitive research and Meta-analysis articles.RESULTS AND CONCLUSION: Current biological scaffolds mainly include synthetic scaffold materials (polyvinyl alcohol, polylactic acid, polyglycolic acid, poly(lactic-glycolic acid)) and natural scaffold materials (collagen, chitosan, gelatin, silk fibroin). Each material has its own merits and demerits. Mesenchymal stem cells have a strong self-replicating and multi-directional differentiation ability, which are considered to be relatively ideal seed cells. Based on the characteristics of the components of biological scaffolds and the proliferation and multi-directional differentiation ability of mesenchymal stem cells, it is of great importance for bone defect repair to design and construct ideal biological scaffold materials with better repair function. Construction of a mesenchymal stem cell/3D scaffold complex is still in its infancy. However, the clinical application of biological scaffolds and mesenchymal stem cells in bone tissue engineering is expected to be achieved with the development of nanomaterials, international regenerative medicine and biomimetic science.