Аннотации:
More than 200,000 people are suffering from Anterior Cruciate Ligament (ACL) related
injuries each year in the US. There is an unmet clinical demand for improving biological
attachment between grafts and the host tissue in addition to providing mechanical support. For
biological graft integration, it is important to provide physiologically feasible environment for
the host cells to enable them to perform their duties. However, behavior of cells during ACL
healing and, thus, the mechanism of ACL healing is not fully understood partly due to the
absence of appropriate environment to test cell behavior both in vitro and in vivo. In order to
help reveal this mechanism, this study aims at: i) investigating the change in fibril diameter of
bovine ACL tissue upon injury, and ii) fabricating nanofiber based scaffolds to represent the
morphology and structure of healthy and injured ACL tissues.