Abstract
In the last decades, significant effort has been attempted to salvage the meniscus following injury.
Basic science approaches to meniscus repair include procedures for both meniscus regeneration and meniscus healing. Regeneration of meniscal tissue focuses on filling a defect with reparative tissue, which resembles the native structure and function of the meniscus. Procedures for meniscus healing, on the other hand, aim to accomplish adhesion between the margins of a meniscal lesion, with no attempt to regenerate or replace meniscal tissue.
Regeneration studies of tissue to fill a defect in the meniscus have shown interesting results, but complete restoration of the native meniscus has not yet been accomplished.
Healing of a meniscal lesion has been investigated in different models although none has demonstrated reproducible healing. Therefore, different paths of investigation must be undertaken, and one of these may be the cell-therapy / tissue engineering approach.
In a study from our group, we showed the capacity of chondrocyte-seeded cartilaginous scaffold to repair a bucket-handle lesion of the knee meniscus orthotopically in a large animal study. Following studies were done in order to test the potential of other scaffolds and different cell sources for the repair of the meniscal tissue. We have also evaluated the role of hypoxia in meniscal development in vitro as basis for future research in this field, as hypoxia could be be considered as a promoter for meniscal cells maturation, and opens considerably opportunities in the field of meniscus tissue engineering.
