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. Author manuscript; available in PMC: 2015 Jun 27.
Published in final edited form as: J Biomech. 2013 Oct 22;47(9):1941–1948. doi: 10.1016/j.jbiomech.2013.10.023

Fig. 1. Our laboratory’s iterative efforts to improve tendon repair in a rabbit central patellar tendon defect model using a functional tissue engineering approach.

Fig. 1

Natural healing (NH) resulted in significantly inferior biomechanical outcomes when compared to the normal uninjured tendon (N). Over the next decade, we developed tissue-engineered constructs (TECs) for augmenting tendon healing by incorporating cells, collagen scaffolds and in vitro tensile stimulation. Our best TEC repair (denoted as SCS) consisted of a collagen sponge, a mesenchymal stem cell population, and in vitro tensile stimulation, achieving 32% of normal patellar tendon failure force and exceeding tangent stiffness for activities of daily living. Adapted with permission from (Butler et al., 2008).