A nanofibrous scaffold representative of the change in collagen fibril diameter distribution of bovine anterior cruciate ligament upon injury [Thesis]

Abstract

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.