Articular cartilage possesses no blood vessels, lymphatic vessels and neural tubes. Thus, the ability of articular cartilage to
repair itself is very limited once it is damaged [1, 2]. Articular cartilage defects is a common clinical disease, but difficult to
repair. Many strategies have been applied to enhance the cartilage defect repair with the ultimate aim which can fill the defects
with the same morphological and functional repaired cartilage tissue [3]. The widely employed strategies in clinic were periosteal
and perichondral tissue grafting, osteochondral allografting, chondrogenic cell transplantation, and subchondral drilling
[4]. However, the immune rejection reaction and high cost of medical expense made the patients disappointed. Fortunately, the
development of tissue engineering, which is a cell-based repair biomaterial engineering brings hope.
The special issue aimed at the stem cells and scaffolds in cartilage tissue engineering. The content included the three main
factors for cartilage tissue engineering, namely stem cells, scaffolds and stimulating factors. It not only provided the latest ideas
and methods to design and fabricate the cartilage repair scaffolds, but also offer the helpful reference for the research of cartilage
tissue engineering. In detail, different sources of stem cells made an important influence on the cartilage repair and they
were widely applied in cartilage tissue engineering. Numerous researches using stem cells with chondrogenic potential (such as
Mesenchymal Stem Cells, Adipose Stem Cells, etc) have suggested that the different scaffolds can support the proteoglycancontaining
tissues and formation of type II collagen [5, 6]. Many physical (such as nanomaterials, stiffness, pores, etc) cues can
drive stem cell differentiation into chondrogenic phenotype [7-9]. The mainly studied scaffolds in cartilage tissue engineering
were hydrogel and electrospun fibers [10-12]. The formation mechanism, preparation techniques, and the influence on stem
cells of these scaffolds were introduced systematically. The stem cells, scaffolds and stimulating factors had intrinsic relationships
and influence each other, once they were applied in tissue engineering. In summary, the special issue presented a deep
view of the research progress in cartilage tissue engineering.
