Connective tissue growth factor in the intervertebral discs exerts an anabolic effect on the extracellular matrix / 中国组织工程研究

ABSTRACT

BACKGROUND:Because of the deficiency of researches on connective tissue growth factor associated with orthopedic diseases, very little attention has been paid to the studies on connective tissue growth factor in the intervertebral disc. OBJECTIVE:Through exploring the role and mechanism of connective tissue growth factor in disc degeneration, to provide new evidence for biotherapy of disc degeneration. METHODS: A computer-based search of PubMed and CNKI was performed by the first author to retrieve articles relevant to the effect and mechanism of connective tissue growth factor on degenerative disc and its related tissues published from January 1997 to October 2014. The keywords were “intervertebral disc; CTGF; TGF-β;hypoxia; disc degeneration” in Chinese and English, respectively, which appeared in the title, abstract or keywords. Articles published recently or in authoritative journals were preferred, and finaly 34 articles were included in result analysis. RESULTS AND CONCLUSION:Recentlyin vivo and in vitro studies on the intervertebral disc have clearly demonstrated the anabolic role of connective tissue growth factor in stimulating matrix production from nucleus pulposus cels and revealed that the transforming growth factorβ-connective tissue growth factor axis was of great importance to celular matrix productionviaregulations and stimulations to transforming growth factor β and hypoxia, while the regulation of hypoxia for connective tissue growth factor was another in a specific cel and tissue manner.