Advances in electrospun nanofibers for bone and cartilage regeneration

Regeneration of bone and cartilage tissues has been an important issue for biological repair in the field of regenerative medicine. The rapidly emerging field of tissue engineering holds great promise for repair and generation of functional bone and cartilage substitutes with a combination of biomaterials, cells, drugs and growth factors. Scaffolds play a pivotal role in tissue engineering as they mimic the natural extracellular matrix (ECM) and play an important role in guiding cell adhesion and proliferation, and maintaining the normal phenotype of the tissues. The use of tissue-engineered grafts based on scaffolds has found to be a more effective method than conventional implantations of autograft, allograft, xenograft. In recent years much attention has been given to electrospinning as a feasible and versatile technique for fabrication of nanofibrous scaffolds, with large surface area to volume ratio, high porosity, mechanical properties and physical dimension similar to the ECM of natural tissues. Extensive research has been carried out for fabrication polymeric nanofibrous substrates with incorporation of hydroxyapatite nanoparticles or bone morphogenetic protein molecules for efficient tissue repair. Here we review on the literature of electrospun nanofibrous scaffolds, their modifications, and advances aimed towards the rapid regeneration of bone and cartilage.