Tissue Engineering of Articular Cartilage: A Mini-Review

Abstract

Damage of articular cartilage due to congenital anomaly, injury or pathological process may lead in decreasing of life quality of affected patients. In many cases, conventional therapeutical approaches may not bring expected results. Tissue engineering by the combination of material technology and cell-based therapy may represent hope for these patients. The main goal of this review article is to summarize current knowledge about biological characteristics of somatic stem cells, chondro-inductive substances and materials in respect to regeneration of articular cartilage.

Effect of Serial Passaging on the Morphology and Biological Characteristics of Human Adipose Tissue-derived Stem Cells

“…Somatic stem cells which were first described over fifty years ago still attract tremendous interest of the researchers nowadays. It was documented, that stem cells due to their unique biological characteristics have significant therapeutic potential for repairing damaged and/or defective tissues (Ham et al, 2015;Sekiya et al, 2015;Zamborsky et al, 2014). The main prerequisite of stem cell-based therapies application is obtaining their adequate amount by expansion in vitro.…”

“…In mature organism they are responsible for promoting the process of regeneration of damaged tissues (Shanti et al, 2007). Due to these biological properties they attracted significant attention mainly in field of regenerative medicine and tissue engineering (Richardson et al, 2016;Zamborsky et al, 2014).…”

Induced Pluripotent Stem Cells for Duchenne Muscular Dystrophy Modeling and Therapy

“…In contrast to myoblasts, stem cells are multipotent and possess the capacity for long-term self-renewal, which makes them a unique tool for regenerative medicine, including for the regeneration of muscles. Their main advantage is that they may be obtained from different tissues and easily expanded to high quantities under in vitro conditions [12,13]. In recent years, induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs) have also attracted significant interest from many researchers and clinicians.…”