Restoring cartilage defects via microfracture or abrasion arthroplasty only provides a short-term functional improvement due to cartilage defects filled with fibrocartilage rather than hyaline articular cartilage. However, limited donor tissue reduces the application of osteochondral allograft, and the immune rejection of patients limits the practice of autologous transplant. At present, surgical treatments of cartilage defects include osteochondral allograft or autologous transplant, microfracture, abrasion arthroplasty, etc. Due to articular cartilage is neither innervated nor vascularized, cartilage damages caused by trauma, disease, and aging are difficult to repair by the cartilage itself. Hence, it suggests that the PHBV-g-QUE fibrous scaffold can be potentially applied in the clinical treatment of cartilage defects in the future.Īrticular cartilage is a very important tissue in the human body that acts as a shock absorber and reduces the friction of joints during movement. Following PHBV-g-QUE fibrous scaffolds and PHBV fibrous scaffolds with adhered chondrocytes were implanted into nude mice for 4 weeks, it demonstrated that PHBV-g-QUE fibrous scaffolds significantly promoted cartilage regeneration compared with the PHBV fibrous scaffolds. The PHBV-g-QUE fibrous scaffold inhibited apoptosis of chondrocyte and reduced oxidative stress of chondrocytes by regulating the transcription of related genes. The PHBV-g-QUE fibrous scaffold facilitates the growth of chondrocytes and maintains chondrocytic phenotype resulting from the upregulation of SOX9, COL II, and ACAN. To fabricate a bioactive cartilage tissue engineering scaffold that promotes cartilage regeneration, quercetin (QUE) modified PHBV (PHBV-g-QUE) fibrous scaffolds were prepared by a two-step surface modification method.

It suggests that the poly (3-hydroxybutyric acid-co-3-hydroxyvaleric acid) (PHBV) scaffold can be used for cartilage tissue engineering, but PHBV is short of bioactivity that is required for cartilage regeneration.

Fibrous scaffolds