Clinical advances of tendon tissue engineering materials in tendon injury / 中国组织工程研究

ABSTRACT

BACKGROUND:The research and development of scaffold materials is the key to tissue engineering, as the scaffold can provide a stable external environment for cell growth.OBJECTIVE:To summarize the clinical advances in tendon tissue engineering materials.METHODS:We searched CBM, CNKI, CSTJ and PubMed database for relevant articles published from January 2004 to May 2016. The keywords were tissue engineering, tendon injuries, biological scaffold, tendon healing in Chinese and English, respectively.RESULTS AND CONCLUSION:The commonly used tissue engineering tendon materials include natural polymer materials, biological derivatives, synthetic materials and composite materials. Natural polymer materials retain the three-dimensional network structure of the normal tissue, with good biocompatibility but poor mechanical properties and degradation speed. Synthetic polymer materials present with good mechanical properties and biodegradability, but have low hydrophilicity and poor cell adhesion capability. Composite materials as an effective combination of the two above-mentioned materials exhibit a certain potential in clinical practice. Biological derivatives come from organisms, and have a net structure and biomechanical properties most similar to the human body after appropriate treatment. Additionaly, these derivatives also have the normal physiological activity and functions, which are considered as the future development direction of biomedical materials.