Materials Properties and Application Strategy for Ligament Tissue Engineering

Purpose Accompanied by clinical and health requirements, ligament tissue engineering has been constantly promoted. Autografts and allografts, due to their limitations and economic benefits, are gradually replaced by artificial ligaments. This review focuses on the materials and application strategy for ligament tissue engineering. Methods The choice of biomaterials is one of the important considerations on ligament research. Several natural and synthetic polymers, together with composites and hybrids materials have been studied on ligament scaffolds. Results Imitating the structure of the native ligament has always been the focus of ligament research, which involves such as surface physical and chemical properties, structural mechanics. Mechanical properties have always been an insurmountable difficulty in application. The method of high cell adhesion and affinity on the artificial ligaments are also the goals to be pursued. Conclusion We describe the strategy for selecting polymers in the design of the scaffolds, as well as discuss the biological and mechanical behavior of these polymers. Several typical research is mentioned for comparison. It is the aims to provide the basic design concept of ligament tissue engineering.