OBJECTIVE: Autologous bone transplantation has been extensively used clinically, but the scant bone source eligible for transplantation cannot meet the demand in large bone defect repair. Tissue engineering seems to provide a way out, by inducing bone regeneration for repairing bone defect. In this article, the authors review the development in bone tissue engineering achieved in recent years.DATA SOURCES: A literature review was conducted with Google and Medline-based search for reports published in Chinese on bone tissue engineering in the last 3 years, as well as for worldwide literature published from January 1964 to December 2002, using the key words for retrieval of bone tissue engineering, scaffold, hydroxyapatite composites.STUDY SELECTION: Fifty-six articles were selected, which documented in vtiro bone culture, non-crystal medical biomaterials, development of bone tissue engineering, experimental and clinical trials of bone tissue engineering and clinical application of the results of bone tissue engineering.DATA EXTRACTION:From the 56 articles, 14 were excluded for repetition of contents. The remaining 42 were classified for reviewing and 21 of these were enrolled as references here.DATA SYSTHESIS: Autologous bone grafting is the usual choice for bone defect repair. The grafts include allografts and xenograft of spongy bone and compact bone, joints, decalcified bone matrix, marrow, ceramics and ceramics composites. But the effect of repair or reconstruction of large bone defect as left by excision of large bone tumors is not satisfactory. Tissue-engineering studies on composites for repair of the damaged nerve, tendon and skin are still in their infancy, while studies of bone scaffold materials has made great progress.CONCLUSION: Great breakthroughs have been made in tissue engineering and relevant studies of tissue defect and function impairment is fast developing. As the structure of motor system and skeletal system are relatively simple,and the bone or cartilage defects clinically common, bone tissue engineering might first enter clinical use in the field of orthopedics.