Application of polymer biomaterials in the tissue engineering

Background: The development of tissue engineering has provided a possibility for repairing and reconstructing tissues or organs. However, studies on biomedical tissue-engineered and polymer tissue-engineered materials need to be investigated. Objective: To clarify the content of tissue engineering and the application of polymer material in tissue engineering from the point of biocompatibility. Retrieval strategy: Using the terms "tissue engineering, tissue engineering materials, Polymers materials, bio-compatibility, bio-compatibility materials, cell-compatibility, cell-compatibility materials", we retrieved PubMed database to identify studies published between January 1990 and December 2007 in the English language. At the same time, we searched Wanfang database with the same terms in the Chinese language. After primarily selected, 81literatures were kept. Inclusive criteria: studies, whose contents are related to biocompatibility of tissue-engineered materials. Exclusive criteria: repetitive studies or Meta analysis. Thirty literatures corresponded to the inclusive criteria, and fifty-one were rejected due to obsolete or repetitive contents. Among the 30 included literatures, 19 were about biocompatibility, and the remaining 11 about cellular compatibility materials. Literature evaluation: The included studies were mainly from Pubmed database and Wanfang database. A total of 25 treatises and 5 reviews were kept. Data synthesis: The content of tissue engineering consisted of seeded cell inoculation, biomaterial implanting and cell transplantation. Allogenic, autogenous, and xenogenous tissues were in vitro broken into cells, and then reconstructed through inoculation and proliferation by gene reconstruction technique. Much attention should be focused on how to reconstruct tissue-engineered materials with materials and living cells, i.e. to reconstruct active materials with biological functions. Tissue-engineered materials should have the best interface reaction effect between material surface and cells. Therefore, the core of studying tissue-engineered materials is to design a device, which has chemical molecular level and three-dimensional molecular level cell/ material mixed surface, and also has a three-dimensional molecular level appearance corresponding to biomechanical requirement. Polymer materials have good physical mechanical functions, and their molecular structures are closer to living body. Therefore, polymer materials are widely used as biomaterials and exert an important role in the field of tissue engineering. Conclusion: To study biomaterials with good tissue compatibility is the basis for tissue engineering development. Polymer materials are widely used in the tissue engineering due to their good property and molecular structure closer to living body.