Abstract:
Injuries to tendons can cause major morbidity in healthy, young active people as well as in the increasing aged population. Providing a scaffold that encourages appropriate cell attachment, growth, and ultimately tissue regeneration, could improve the clinical outcomes from injuries such as rotator cuff tears. Millions of dollars are spent annually on the development of biomaterial scaffolds and many are put into clinical use without proper cell compatibility and immunogenicity evaluation leading to many instances of unfavourable results with associate patient morbidity. The purpose of this study was to set-up an evaluation package to assess scaffold materials of both natural and synthetic origin for their potential utility in tendon regenerative medicine.