Abstract
Articular cartilage defects remain a clinical challenge. Articular cartilage defects progress to osteoarthritis, which negatively (e.g., remarkable pain, decreased mobility, distress) affects millions of people worldwide and is associated with excessive healthcare costs. Surgical procedures and cell-based therapies have failed to deliver a functional therapy. To this end, tissue engineering therapies provide a promise to deliver a functional cartilage substitute. Among the various scaffold fabrication technologies available, electrospinning is continuously gaining pace, as it can produce nano- to micro- fibrous scaffolds that imitate architectural features of native extracellular matrix supramolecular assemblies and can deliver variable cell populations and bioactive molecules. Herein, we comprehensively review advancements and shortfalls of various electrospun scaffolds in cartilage engineering.
Highlights
Adult articular cartilage is a relatively thin (2–4 mm), aneural, avascular, and alymphatic tissue that acts as cushion against physiological loads at joints
Transforming growth factor β1 initiates the condensation of mesenchymal stem cells (MSCs) to chondrocytes for the onset of chondrogenesis, increases the collagen type II gene expression levels during the early stage of chondrogenesis and inhibits the terminal differentiation of chondrocytes via increasing the expression of parathyroid hormone-related peptide (Li et al, 2005a; Demoor et al, 2014)
The use of poly(lactic acid) (PLA) and poly(glycolic acid) (PGA) is limited for hard tissue regeneration, such as cartilage tissue, due to their relatively weak mechanical properties (Cheung et al, 2007), one study showed that bidirectionally aligned and layered PLA electrospun mats loaded with human meniscus cells in an extracellular matrix (ECM) hydrogel displayed ∼5-fold higher tensile modulus to the randomly aligned scaffolds; they had comparable tensile modulus to the human meniscus in the circumferential direction and they maintained physiological meniscus cells gene expression for COLA1A1, SOX9, and COMP (Baek et al, 2015)
Summary
Adult articular cartilage is a relatively thin (2–4 mm), aneural, avascular, and alymphatic tissue that acts as cushion against physiological loads at joints. Once injured, it loses much of its carrying capacity, causing a susceptible environment for wearing and tearing between the joints (Correa and Lietman, 2017; Zhang et al, 2019). The breakdown molecules following injury cause an inflammation in the joints This inflammation increases the level of synovial cytokines, alters the resident cell phenotypes and induces matrix-degrading enzymes. We briefly describe the cellular and extracellular composition and architecture of cartilage, along with key modulators of chondrogenesis, and we comprehensively review advancements and shortfalls of electrospun scaffolds in cartilage engineering
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