Tendon-derived sections for tissue engineering applications

Nature has evolved a variety of clever ways to create nanoscale entities with remarkable complexity. Many biological specimen have extremely well-defined shapes and chemical activities, such as collagen fibers in tendon, muscle fibers in muscle, cornea, bone, diatoms, wood. Tendon for example, comprises bundles of well-aligned of collagen nanofibers. Recently, we have developed a method for fabricating constructs composed of aligned collagen fibers from decellularized bovine Achilles tendon (Figure 1A). This process involves decellularizing the native tendon, and sectioning the material into thin sheets using a cryomicrotome. Throughout the decellularization process, the collagen maintains its native triple helical structure, providing mechanical strength and nanotopographical cues. These sheets can then be stacked and reoriented, with fibers aligned in multiple directions in adjacent layers, giving the material more transversely isotropic properties. The sheets can also be rolled into tubular structures that could find use in biomedic al applications such as creating tissue engineered blood vessels or conduits for peripheral nerve repair. For nerve repair applications, we show that cells such as rat Schwann cells grow, and align along the tendon sections and also demonstrate that more complex structures, such as chick dorsal root ganglia explants will align well along this material. These results show that tendon sections produced through this process can produce a highly biocompatible material with good mechanical properties, suitable for the growth of a variety of cells.