2022, Vol. 26 ›› Issue (27): 4386-4392

Application of multicellular construction of vascularized tissue engineered bone in bone repair

Zhao Doudou1, 2, Lin Kaili2   

Abstract: BACKGROUND: Insufficient vascularization of tissue engineered bone is the main challenge that limits the clinical application of bone tissue engineering to repair large bone defects.
OBJECTIVE: To summarize the application of bone-forming cells and angiogenic cells to construct tissue engineered bone (based on scaffold or scaffold-free) in bone repair. It is expected to realize the sustainable angiogenesis of tissue engineered bone and the generation of fully functional blood vessels, so as to improve the cell survival rate of bone tissue engineering in the application of large bone defect repair, and to provide a reference for promoting bone formation and remodeling.
METHODS: The articles published in the CNKI database, PubMed database, and Web of science database from 2000 to 2021 were searched by computer. The Chinese and English key words were “bone tissue engineering, osteogenesis and angiogenesis, multicellular”. According to the inclusion and exclusion criteria, 63 articles were finally included for analysis of the results.
RESULTS AND CONCLUSION: (1) At present, the most commonly used bone-forming cells are mainly mesenchymal stem cells, adipose stem cells and osteoblasts, and the most commonly used angiogenic cells are human umbilical vein endothelial cells and endothelial progenitor cells. (2) Encapsulating cells in a scaffold is better than seeding cells on a scaffold in achieving precise positioning of various types of cells. (3) The method of stacking two different mono-cultured cell sheets or co-cultured mono-layered cell sheets can control the position of various types of cells to construct a vascularied network. (4) At present, scaffold-based tissue engineering still needs to overcome the problems of mismatch between scaffold degradation rate and tissue regeneration rate, uncontrollable interaction between cells and biomaterials, and so on. Tissue engineering based on scaffold-free cell sheets needs to overcome the problem of low mechanical strength. (5) The future creation of a functional 3D vascularized tissue engineered bone of clinical size also requires attention, including cell culture and biological mechanisms of action. The combination of tissue engineering, cell engineering and genetic engineering to construct tissue engineered bone is expected to stimulate early angiogenesis, maintain blood circulation, prevent cell death inside the construct, and accelerate the repair of clinical large scale bone defects.
Key words: vascularization, bone tissue engineering, multicellularity, co-culture, osteogenesis and angiogenesis, scaffold, cell sheets, review