Figure 1. Overview of study design.

Tendon cells on monolayer (“2D cells”) were harvested prior to seeding tendon cells into fibrin matrix to engineer human tendon-constructs. A) Culture condition under static tension, TGF-β1 supplementation to half of the samples at day 0 defined as the first time point at which a continuous linear matrix between the anchor points was formed; B) Tendon-constructs were cut to release tension at day 0, TGF-β1 supplementation to half of the samples.