Biomechanical considerations of animal models used in tissue engineering of bone

Tissue engineering combines the aspects of cell biology, engineering, material science, and surgery to generate new functional tissue, and provides an important approach to the repair of segmental defects and in restoring biomechanical function. The development of tissue-engineering strategies into clinical therapeutic protocols requires extensive, preclinical experimentation in appropriate animal models. The ultimate success of any treatment strategy must be established in these animal models before clinical application. It is clear that the demands of the biological and mechanical environment in the clinical repair of critical size defects with tissue-engineered materials is significantly different from those existing in experimental animals. The major considerations facing any tissue-engineering testing logic include the choice of the defect, the animal, the age of the animal, the anatomic site, the size of the lesion, and most importantly, the micro-mechanical environment. With respect to biomechanical considerations when selecting animals for tissue- engineering of bone, it is evident that no common criteria have been reported. While in smaller animals due to size constraint only structural properties of whole bones can be measured, in larger animals and humans both material properties and structural properties are of interest. Based on reported results, comparison between the tissue-engineered bone across species may be of importance in establishing better model selection criteria. It has already been found that the deformation of long bones is fairly constant across species, and that stress levels during gait are dependent on the weight of the animal and the material properties of the bone tissue. Future research should therefore be geared towards developing better biomechanical testing systems and then finding the right animal model for the existing equipment.