Current concepts in tissue engineering technique for repair of cartilage defect

Hunter's observation in 1743 that cartilage "once destroyed, is not repaire d," has not essentially changed for 250 years. At present, there is no well -established procedure for the repair of cartilage defect with articular ca rtilage, which has the same biochemical and biomechanical properties as the surrounding normal intact cartilage. In 1994, transplantation of human aut ologous chondrocytes in suspension, as reported by Brittberg et al.: provid ed a potential procedure for articular cartilage repair. We have improved t heir procedure and developed a new technique which creates new cartilage-li ke tissue by cultivating autologous chondrocytes embedded in Atelo-collagen gel for 3 weeks before transplantation. These improvements maintained the chondrocyte phenotype, evenly distributed chondrocytes throughout the osteo chondral defects, and decreased the risk of leakage of grafted chondrocytes into the defects. Good clinical results suggest that this technique should be a promising procedure for repairing articular cartilage defect.