BACKGROUND:Cartilage tissue engineering scaffold is a substitution for extracellular matrix, and there is a great significance on the shape and pore structure of the scaffold.
OBJECTIVE:To retrospectively focus on the fabrication technology of three-dimensional porous cartilage tissue engineering scaffolds.
METHODS:The first author searched PubMed, ELSEVIER SCIENCEDIRECT, Wanfang and CNKI databases (2000/2013) to retrieve relevant articles about the fabrication technology tissue-engineered cartilage scaffolds. The key words were“cartilage tissue engineering;scaffolds;fabrication”in English and Chinese, respectively. RESULTS AND CONCLUSION:The fabrication technologies of three-dimensional porous cartilage tissue
engineering scaffolds are as fol ows:Phase separation/freeze-drying, hydrogels, rapid prototyping manufacturing, electrospinning, solvent casting/particulate leaching, gas foaming. The current cartilage studies have demonstrated that the pore size has a significance on the regeneration of the cartilage tissue, the pore size ranging from 100-250μm al ows for the regeneration of bone and cartilage tissue. The scaffold fabricated by the solvent casting/particulate leaching and gas foaming technology at a pore size of 100-250μm is suitable for the bone and cartilage tissue regeneration. To obtain the adequate biological and mechanical properties, researchers usual y combine a variety of methods to fabricate the cartilage tissue engineering scaffolds.