Preliminary Study On The Repair Of Articular Cartilage Defects By The Injectable Chitosan/glycerophosphate Encapsulating Allograft Chondrocytes

Background and purpose:Damaged articular cartilage, caused by traumatic injury or degenerative disease, has a limited regenerative capacity, which bring dysfunction and inferior life quality to patients. It is still a difficult problem to repair and reconstruct articular cartilage defects in orthopaedics, and it is also one of the research focuses in recent years. Untill now, there have been a few merhods to repair articular cartilage defects including"microfracture","masaicplasty", and transplantations of periosteum, periochondrium and isolated chondrocytes. Although these methods have their advantages and disadvantages respedtively, but no method has been judged superior. Tissue enfineering that aims to"replicate tissue and organ"provide another innovative choice for repair and regeneration of articular cartilage defects. Injectable scaffold has raised great interest for tissue regeneration in vivo, because it allows easy filling of irregularly shaped defects and the implantation of cells through minimally invasive surgical procedures.Two kinds of injectable scaffolds are used often, such as artificial synthesis and natural gel. The former has worse biocompatibility and some toxic action. The later have better physiological degradability and biocompatibility. And maintain the chondrocytes surrounded morphology, multiplited, phenotype and functions of secretion matrix. As a promising strategy for the successful regeneration of long-lasting hyaline cartilage, tissue engineering has received increasing recognition. It is envisioned that such explants could be transplanted or regenerated in vivo within the biodegradable chitosan/glycerophosphate (C/GP) gel for the treatment of partial or full-thickness defects in articular cartilage. Importantly, the injectable delivery of the gel could be used in filling complex defects in the articular surface via minimally invasive procedures. In this study, we selected the injectable gel derived from chitosan-based scaffold, containing allogenic chondroncyte, to...