Cartilage tissue engineering limitations

S. Grad, L. Kupcsik, K. Goma, S. Gogolewski, M. AUni, The use of biodegradable polyurethane scaffolds for cartilage tissue engineering potential and limitations, Biomaterials 24 (28) (2003) 5163-5171. 

This chapter will discuss electrospinning as a promising fabrication technique for scaffolding, current applications of electrospun scaffolds for cartilage tissue engineering, as well as limitations with the use of such scaffolds for translational applications. 

Current limitations of electrospun scaffolds in cartilage tissue engineering... 

PGA was one of the very first degradable polymers ever investigated for biomedical use. PGA found favor as a degradable suture, and has been actively used since 1970 [45 -7]. Because PGA is poorly soluble in many common solvents, limited research has been conducted with PGA-based drug delivery devices. Instead, most recent research has focused on short-term tissue engineering scaffolds. PGA is often fabricated into a mesh network and has been used as a scaffold for bone [48-51], cartilage [52-54], tendon [55, 56], and tooth [57]. 

Minns, R. J., Russell, S., Young, S., Bihh, R., Mohter, P. (2006). Repair of articular cartilage defects using 3-dimensional tissue engineering textile architectures. In S. C. Anand, J. F. Kennedy, M. Miraftah, S. Rajendran (Eds.), Medical and healthcare textiles (pp. 335—341). Cambridge Woodhead Pubhshing Limited. 

Polymers (macromolecules) are the primary materials for various tissue engineering scaffolds such as skin, cartilage, bone etc. Limited number of inorganic materials is used in bone and mineralized tissue engineering applications. In this chapter, the most commonly used polymers in tissue engineering are reviewed. 

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