title: Cell-laden hydrogels for osteochondral and cartilage tissue engineering.
abstract: Despite tremendous advances in the field of regenerative medicine, it still remains challenging to repair the osteochondral interface and full-thickness articular cartilage defects. This inefficiency largely originates from the lack of appropriate tissue-engineered artificial matrices that can replace the damaged regions and promote tissue regeneration. Hydrogels are emerging as a promising class of biomaterials for both soft and hard tissue regeneration. Many critical properties of hydrogels, such as mechanical stiffness, elasticity, water content, bioactivity, and degradation, can be rationally designed and conveniently tuned by proper selection of the material and chemistry. Particularly, advances in the development of cell-laden hydrogels have opened up new possibilities for cell therapy. In this article, we describe the problems encountered in this field and review recent progress in designing cell-hydrogel hybrid constructs for promoting the reestablishment of osteochondral/cartilage tissues. Our focus centers on the effects of hydrogel type, cell type, and growth factor delivery on achieving efficient chondrogenesis and osteogenesis. We give our perspective on developing next-generation matrices with improved physical and biological properties for osteochondral/cartilage tissue engineering. We also highlight recent advances in biomanufacturing technologies (e.g. molding, bioprinting, and assembly) for fabrication of hydrogel-based osteochondral and cartilage constructs with complex compositions and microarchitectures to mimic their native counterparts.
  
  
  
  Despite tremendous advances in the field of regenerative medicine, it still remains challenging to repair the osteochondral interface and full-thickness articular cartilage defects. This inefficiency largely originates from the lack of appropriate tissue-engineered biomaterials that replace the damaged regions and promote tissue regeneration. Cell-laden hydrogel systems have emerged as a promising tissue-engineering platform to address this issue. In this article, we describe the fundamental problems encountered in this field and review recent progress in designing cell-hydrogel constructs for promoting the reestablishment of osteochondral/cartilage tissues. Our focus centers on the effects of hydrogel composition, cell type, and growth factor delivery on achieving efficient chondrogenesis and osteogenesis. We give our perspective on developing next-generation hydrogel/inorganic particle/stem cell hybrid composites with improved physical and biological properties for osteochondral/cartilage tissue engineering. We also highlight recent advances in biomanufacturing and bioengineering technologies (e.g. 3D bioprinting) for fabrication of hydrogel-based osteochondral and cartilage constructs.
authors.affiliation: Biomaterials Innovation Research Center, Division of Engineering in Medicine, Department of Medicine, Brigham and Women's Hospital, Harvard Medical School, Boston 02115, MA, USA; Harvard-MIT Division of Health Sciences and Technology, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA 02139, USA; Guangzhou Women and Children's Medical Center, Sun Yat-sen University, Guangzhou 510623, Guangdong, People's Republic of China.
authors.forename: Jingzhou
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Yang
authors.affiliation: Biomaterials Innovation Research Center, Division of Engineering in Medicine, Department of Medicine, Brigham and Women's Hospital, Harvard Medical School, Boston 02115, MA, USA; Harvard-MIT Division of Health Sciences and Technology, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA 02139, USA.
authors.forename: Yu Shrike
authors.initials: YS
authors.lastname: Zhang
authors.affiliation: Biomaterials Innovation Research Center, Division of Engineering in Medicine, Department of Medicine, Brigham and Women's Hospital, Harvard Medical School, Boston 02115, MA, USA; Harvard-MIT Division of Health Sciences and Technology, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA 02139, USA.
authors.forename: Kan
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: Yue
authors.affiliation: Biomaterials Innovation Research Center, Division of Engineering in Medicine, Department of Medicine, Brigham and Women's Hospital, Harvard Medical School, Boston 02115, MA, USA; Harvard-MIT Division of Health Sciences and Technology, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA 02139, USA; Department of Bioindustrial Technologies, College of Animal Bioscience and Technology, Konkuk University, Hwayang-dong, Gwangjin-gu, Seoul 143-701, Republic of Korea; Department of Physics, King Abdulaziz University, Jeddah 21569, Saudi Arabia. Electronic address: alik@bwh.harvard.edu.
authors.forename: Ali
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Khademhosseini
mesh_terms: D000818:Animals; D002356:Cartilage / Q000166:cytology / Q000378:metabolism*; D020219:Chondrogenesis; D006801:Humans; D020100:Hydrogels / Q000737:chemistry*; D010012:Osteogenesis; D023822:Tissue Engineering / Q000379:methods*
chemical_list: D020100:Hydrogels
keywords: Cartilage tissue engineering; Cell-laden hydrogels; Osteochondral tissue engineering; Stem cells