Natural biomaterials for construction of cartilage scallfold

Abstract

Once damaged, articular cartilage should be repaired or replaced owing to its limited self-repair capacity. But traditional methods for treating cartilage defect are not satisfying. In contrast, tissue engineering offers promising hope for cartilage disease. In the three main factors of tissue engineering, such as seed cells, scallfold materials and signal molecules, scallfold materials play a fundamental role. The paper reviews cartilage scallfold materials, introduces collagen type Ⅱ, hyaluronic acid and chondroitin sulfate which naturally exist in cartilage, and dicusses the current problems and the future directions of tissue engineering scallfold.

Keywords

• artificial organs and biomedical materials science
• cartilage scallfold
• collagen type Ⅱ
• hyaluronic acid
• chondroitinsulfate