Abstract
Cartilage injury originating from trauma or osteoarthritis is a common joint disease that can bring about an increasing social and economic burden in modern society. On account of its avascular, neural, and lymphatic characteristics, the poor migration ability of chondrocytes, and a low number of progenitor cells, the self-healing ability of cartilage defects has been significantly limited. Natural hydrogels, occurring abundantly with characteristics such as high water absorption, biodegradation, adjustable porosity, and biocompatibility like that of the natural extracellular matrix (ECM), have been developed into one of the most suitable scaffold biomaterials for the regeneration of cartilage in material science and tissue engineering. Notably, natural hydrogels derived from sources such as animal or human cadaver tissues possess the bionic mechanical behaviors of physiological cartilage that are required for usage as articular cartilage substitutes, by which the enhanced chondrogenic phenotype ability may be achieved by facilely embedding living cells, controlling degradation profiles, and releasing stimulatory growth factors. Hence, we summarize an overview of strategies and developments of the various kinds and functions of natural hydrogels for cartilage tissue engineering in this review. The main concepts and recent essential research found that great challenges like vascularity, clinically relevant size, and mechanical performances were still difficult to overcome because the current limitations of technologies need to be severely addressed in practical settings, particularly in unpredictable preclinical trials and during future forays into cartilage regeneration using natural hydrogel scaffolds with high mechanical properties. Therefore, the grand aim of this current review is to underpin the importance of preparation, modification, and application for the high performance of natural hydrogels for cartilage tissue engineering, which has been achieved by presenting a promising avenue in various fields and postulating real-world respective potentials.
Highlights
Natural polymeric materials are widely used in engineering and regenerating tissues for human health because of their unique advantages, namely biocompatiblity, biodegradation, favorable porsity, and achievable mechanics (Seal et al, 2001; Shin et al, 2003; Shelke et al, 2014; Sahana and Rekha, 2018; Zhang et al, 2019)
In vitro and in vivo experiments verified that this modified ODMA-gelatin methacrylamide (GelMA) hydrogel, as a typical growth factor-free scaffold, provided a favorable microenvironment to promote the mesenchymal stem cell attachment and spreading, and enhanced the cartilage regeneration after encapsulation of chondroitin sulfate or TGFβ3, which would be served as an ideal candidate hydrogel scaffold for cartilage or other tissues repair in biomedical applications (Gan et al, 2019)
It has been found that the high performance of natural hydrogels has better biocompatibility and biodegradability and is more conducive to cell survival
Summary
Natural polymeric materials are widely used in engineering and regenerating tissues for human health (e.g., skin, cartilage, bone, tracheal splints, and wound-healing vascular grafts) because of their unique advantages, namely biocompatiblity, biodegradation, favorable porsity, and achievable mechanics (Seal et al, 2001; Shin et al, 2003; Shelke et al, 2014; Sahana and Rekha, 2018; Zhang et al, 2019). It is deemed that natural polymers are essential for designing bioactive compounds, for drug delivery systems for disease treatment, and for the construction of smart therapeutic systems for bioengineered functional tissues In this case, the emergence of natural hydrogels (e.g., amino acids, proteins, polysaccharides, and glycosaminoglycans) has brought about significant clinical application values byimplant fabrication methods (Mano et al, 2007). As a typical biological scaffold, hydrogels possess unique architectures of highly hydrated 3D and versatile capacities of high water content, suitable pore size and porosity, substance exchange capacity, good biodegradability performance, and extraordinary mechanical properties (Peppas et al, 2006), and can provide a suitable microenvironment and efficient biocompatibility and high strength for holding considerable promise in cartilage differentiation and cartilage-specific ECM regeneration, resulting in their wide usages for tissue engineering and cell therapy in various bio-applications. Understanding medical needs and concurrently lessening the difficulty of hydrogel construction should be the goal for future research in this field
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