Izadifar Zohreh, Chen Xiongbiao, Kulyk William
Division of Biomedical Engineering, College of Engineering, University of Saskatchewan, 57 Campus Dr., Saskatoon SK S7N5A9, Canada.
Department of Anatomy and Cell Biology, College of Medicine, University of Saskatchewan, 107 Wiggins Rd., Saskatoon SK S7N 5E5, Canada.
J Funct Biomater. 2012 Nov 14;3(4):799-838. doi: 10.3390/jfb3040799.
Damage to articular cartilage can eventually lead to osteoarthritis (OA), a debilitating, degenerative joint disease that affects millions of people around the world. The limited natural healing ability of cartilage and the limitations of currently available therapies make treatment of cartilage defects a challenging clinical issue. Hopes have been raised for the repair of articular cartilage with the help of supportive structures, called scaffolds, created through tissue engineering (TE). Over the past two decades, different designs and fabrication techniques have been investigated for developing TE scaffolds suitable for the construction of transplantable artificial cartilage tissue substitutes. Advances in fabrication technologies now enable the strategic design of scaffolds with complex, biomimetic structures and properties. In particular, scaffolds with hybrid and/or biomimetic zonal designs have recently been developed for cartilage tissue engineering applications. This paper reviews critical aspects of the design of engineered scaffolds for articular cartilage repair as well as the available advanced fabrication techniques. In addition, recent studies on the design of hybrid and zonal scaffolds for use in cartilage tissue repair are highlighted.
关节软骨损伤最终可能导致骨关节炎（OA），这是一种使人衰弱的退行性关节疾病，影响着全球数百万人。软骨有限的自然愈合能力以及现有治疗方法的局限性使得软骨缺损的治疗成为一个具有挑战性的临床问题。借助通过组织工程（TE）创建的称为支架的支持结构来修复关节软骨，人们燃起了希望。在过去二十年中，已经研究了不同的设计和制造技术，以开发适用于构建可移植人工软骨组织替代物的组织工程支架。制造技术的进步现在使得能够设计具有复杂仿生结构和特性的支架。特别是，最近已经开发出具有混合和/或仿生区域设计的支架用于软骨组织工程应用。本文综述了用于关节软骨修复的工程支架设计的关键方面以及可用的先进制造技术。此外，还重点介绍了最近关于用于软骨组织修复的混合和区域支架设计的研究。
