Cartilage Tissue Engineering: An Update on Multi-Component Approach

Cartilage injury and osteoarthritis are big clinical challenges as self-healing potential of cartilaginous tissue is very limited. The need for a multi-disciplinary approach in order to establish new strategies for cartilage healing has been addressed by many scientists from the fields of orthopaedic surgery or biomedical engineering in the last two decades. With a focus on the very preclinical research in this field, this review covers the multitude of approaches, ranging from cellbased to scaffold-based strategies and also including growth factors, precondition approach, mechanical stimulation-that have been combined to assess their potential to develop effective concepts for the treatment of cartilage injury or osteoarthritis.