Decellularization Strategies to Engineer Fibrocartilage Bioscaffolds: A Review

Abstract

Fibrocartilage or known as meniscus tissues located in between the tibia and femur always subjected to extreme forces that can lead to injury especially for the sportsperson. The meniscal injury mean incidence in the general population is 66 per 100,000. The principal methods for the surgical management of fibrocartilage injury have been improvised from meniscectomy to meniscal repair and meniscal reconstruction that portrays different advantages and disadvantages in the short and long-term results. The inability to treat meniscus injury without osteoarthritis development in long-term results also motivates to find new treatment strategies. In this current era, the development of the multidisciplinary fields of tissue engineering and regenerative medicine provides new alternatives for the treatment approaches. This field involves the regeneration of the required tissue using scaffolds such as synthetic, natural, and biological scaffolds to restore the damaged one. Biological scaffolds are preferable because it tremendously mimics the native anatomical structure and has similar ratios and concentration of the proteins and growth factors that influence tissue repair and remodeling. The development of biological scaffolds with low immunogenic levels involves the decellularization process that eliminates all the cellular components while preserved the extracellular matrix (ECM) integrity and mechanics. In this review, the pros and cons of the recent decellularization strategies to engineer fibrocartilage scaffolds have been discussed. We believed that the ideal decellularization methods still need to be explored to develop suitable biological scaffolds that structurally and functionally mimic native tissue as a replacement for new tissue regeneration.