Cartilage engineering in the context of head and neck surgery

K. Boumédiene is full professor of Biochemistry and Molecular biology, University of Caen Normandy (Unicaen, France). Head of Laboratory BIOCONNECT EA 7451. In his lab (Bioconnect), he is interested in cartilage physiopathology and its repair by tissue engineering. While, cartilage seems to be a simple tissue, due to its lack of vascularization and innervation, it remains complex to construct ex-vivo. This talk will review several attempts of cartilage engineering including different cell types and scaffolds while focusing on the field of head & neck surgery, especially auricular cartilage. Latest results, including various biomaterials (decellularized cartilage, vegetal scaffolds) will also be shown.