Abby Chainani, Kirk J Hippensteel, Alysha Kishan, N William Garrigues, David S Ruch, Farshid Guilak, Dianne Little
Full-thickness rotator cuff tears are one of the most common causes of shoulder pain in people over the age of 65. High retear rates and poor functional outcomes are common after surgical repair, and currently available extracellular matrix scaffold patches have limited abilities to enhance new tendon formation. In this regard, tissue-engineered scaffolds may provide a means to improve repair of rotator cuff tears. Electrospinning provides a versatile method for creating nanofibrous scaffolds with controlled architectures, but several challenges remain in its application to tissue engineering, such as cell infiltration through the full thickness of the scaffold as well as control of cell growth and differentiation...
December 2013: Tissue Engineering. Part A