Tissue engineering in orthopedic sports medicine: a current concepts review

Abstract

Tissue Engineering (TE) has been revolutionizing the concepts and therapeutic approaches for the treatment of different sports injuries. To overcome the drawbacks of the current treatments, tissue engineering-based strategies provided new possibilities, either in the treatment of defects, which were previously considered unrecoverable, but also in what concerns to the decrease of recovery time. Supported in 3 mainstream concepts, TE uses the combination of scaffolds, cells and biological factors in order to pursue a better functional regenerative process. Aware of the limitations of today's treatments, the scientific and medical communities have made great effort to apply, in the safest and most efficient manner, the panoply of new TE tools. However, it is important to understand that there is still a long way to go until these new approaches turn out to be the â gold standardâ treatment in the clinics. This review aims overview the current concepts of TE applications in orthopedic sports medicine under pre-clinical and clinical research applied to growth factors, scaffolds and stem cells.