组织工程研究进展

Recent progress in tissue engineering

各种原因导致的组织、器官缺损或功能障碍是危害人类健康的主要原因,组织、器官缺损的修复和功能重建是医学领域面临的挑战。组织工程学的建立和发展,改变了传统的"以创伤修复创伤"的组织移植治疗模式。从人体获取少量自体组织,提取种子细胞并经过体外扩增后种植到支架材料上,经过体外培养形成工程化组织后再植入体内,修复相关组织缺损并恢复原有功能。这样的组织再生模式可以真正实现无创或微创的组织器官再生和功能重建。围绕种子细胞、生物材料、组织构建等组织工程基本要素,以组织构建为核心,开展了包括骨、软骨、肌腱等多种组织构建和大动物组织缺损修复的研究,取得了一系列重要进展,并成功开展了组织工程骨的小规模临床应用。这些研究成果,证实了组织工程的广阔应用前景,奠定了向临床应用的基础。该成果于2008年荣获国家科技发明二等奖。

Tissue damage and organ disfunction caused by trauma or variety of diseases have become major threatens to human health. The restoring, maintaining, or enhancing tissue and organ function have been a great challenge in medical science. Tissue engineering, a new approach that use the combination of cells, engineering and materials methods, and suitable biochemical and physio-chemical factors to repair or restore the biological functions of damaged tissue/organ, is changing the traditional therapeutic strategy from tissue/organ graft to tissue/organ regeneration. With the progresses on seeding cells, biomaterials and engineering techniques, we have successfully constructed tissue engineered bone, cartilage and tendon to repair the related defects in large mammals. In addition, tissue engineered bone has been applied in clinic with satisfied results. The successful works in large animal studies and clinical trials demonstrated the potential power of this approach in tissue/organ regeneration. These works have been awarded for National Award for Technological Invention 2nd Prize in 2008.