Cartilage tissue engineering: uses of injection molding and computer aided design for the fabrication of complex geometries with high dimensional tolerances: a dissertation

Cartilage Tissue Engineering. Joint pain and functional impairment due to cartilage damage from osteoarthritis and other means is a major source of disability for adults the world over. Cartilage is an avascular tissue with a very limited capacity for self repair. Current medical and surgical approaches to cartilage repair also have limited efficacy, and in all cases fail to completely restore a normal, healthy cartilage phenotype. Tissue engineering is a relatively new approach to cartilage repair that seeks to fabricate a replacement tissue, indistinguishable from healthy, native tissue. The basic idea of the tissue engineering approach is to seed tissue synthesizing cells into a shapeable, biocompatible/bioabsorbable scaffold that serves as a temporary extracellular matrix with a localized source of bioactive molecules to direct the development of new tissue. The challenge of tissue engineering is to identify cells, scaffolds, and growth conditions that will be optimal for tissue regeneration. The goal of the current studies was to evaluate one aspect of all three of the major components of cartilage tissue engineering: cell source, scaffolding material and preparation, and controlled growth factor delivery. We evaluated the chondrogenic potential of human nasal chondrocytes grown in calcium alginate in an in vivo culture system, the potential of computer-aided design and injection molding with calcium alginate to reliably reproduce complex geometries with high dimensional tolerances, and the potential for the controlled