Abstract
Clinical treatments for the repair of osteochondral defects (OCD) are merely palliative, not completely curative, and thus enormously unfulfilled challenges. With the in-depth studies of biology, medicine, materials, and engineering technology, the conception of OCD repair and regeneration should be renewed. During the past decades, many innovative tissue-engineered approaches for repairing and regenerating damaged osteochondral units have been widely explored. Various scaffold-free and scaffold-based strategies, such as monophasic, biphasic, and currently fabricated multiphasic and gradient architectures have been proposed and evaluated. Meanwhile, progenitor cells and tissue-specific cells have also been intensively investigated in vivo as well as ex vivo. Concerning bioactive factors and drugs, they have been combined with scaffolds and/or living cells, and even released in a spatiotemporally controlled manner. Although tremendous progress has been achieved, further research and development (R&D) is needed to convert preclinical outcomes into clinical applications. Here, the osteochondral unit structure, its defect classifications, and diagnosis are summarized. Commonly used clinical reparative techniques, tissue-engineered strategies, emerging 3D-bioprinting technologies, and the status of their clinical applications are discussed. Existing challenges to translation are also discussed and potential solutions for future R&D directions are proposed.
Original language | English |
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Article number | 2001008 |
Number of pages | 22 |
Journal | Advanced healthcare materials |
DOIs | |
Publication status | Published - 1 Jan 2020 |
Funding
This work was supported by the AO Foundation (AO‐OCD Consortium TA1711481: Osteochondral Bone Repair with Innovative Tissue‐Engineering and 3D Bioactive Composite Scaffolds) and in part by the Hong Kong RGC Theme‐based Research Scheme (T13‐402/17‐N) as well as the grant of “Shenzhen Double Chain Project for Innovation and Development Industry” supported by Bureau of Industry and Information Technology of Shenzhen (201908141541).
Keywords
- clinical applications
- osteochondral defect repair and regeneration
- scaffolds
- tissue-engineered strategies