Research advancement of tissue engineering in urology / 中国组织工程研究

ABSTRACT

BACKGROUND: Tissue engineering provides a new way for the repair of urinary tissue and organ defects.Urinary tissue engineering has shown a bright prospect.OBJECTIVE: To review the latest research on urinary tissue engineering at national and international level.METHODS: With the keywords of tissue engineering, urology, scaffold, vascularization in Chinese and in English,respectively, a computer-based search for articles published from January 2000 to January 2016 was performed in CNKI and PubMed databases. The articles addressing urology tissue engineering, scaffolds and vascularization were collected,summarized and analyzed.RESULTS AND CONCLUSION: The selection and cultivation of seed cells, scaffold material performance, tissue construction in vitro, and degree of vascularization all make an important influence on the repair of urinary injuries. As different seed cells hold different biological characteristics, we should make full consideration prior to choosing an appropriate seed cell, so as to pave a good foundation for urinary tissue engineering. Scaffolds with good three-dimensional structure can promote the cell growth and proliferation, tissue in-growth and vascularization.Tissue-engineered materials are superior to traditional repair materials, but still on initial stage, and further large scale trials will be necessary. Moreover, some problems needed to be solved, such as the regenerated tissue with incomplete function different from natural tissues, and regeneration failure caused by biological stent rejection.