Engineering cartilage tissue

Abstract

The objective of this chapter is to address timely work in the area of cartilage tissue engineering, with a specific focus on the regeneration of articular cartilage. Many approaches have been used for the engineering of articular cartilage with a wide range of materials formed into meshes, sponges, and hydrogels and with a range of cell sources including chondrocytes, fibroblasts, and stem cells. At present, the current state of the art is the use of mesenchymal stem cells encapsulated in synthetic hydrogels; an approach which overcomes many of the limitations present in previous material formulations and in the definition of a clinically relevant and widely available acceptable cell source for tissue repair. Considerable advances have been made in these areas to generate cartilage constructs with near native properties and histological features. With the addition of various stimulatory cues (molecules, materials, mechanical loading), we are now poised to develop functional cartilage replacement tissues.