title: *Comparison of Autologous, Allogeneic, and Cell-Free Scaffold Approaches for Engineered Tendon Repair in a Rabbit Model-A Pilot Study.
abstract: Tendons are subjected to high strength dynamic mechanical forces in vivo. Mechanical strength is an essential requirement for tendon scaffold materials. A composite scaffold was used in this study to provide mechanical strength, which was composed of an inter part of nonwoven polyglycolic acid (PGA) fibers and an outer part of the net knitted with PGA and polylactic acid (PLA) fibers in a ratio of 4:2. This study compared three different approaches for in vivo tendon engineering, that is, cell-free scaffold and allogeneic and autologous cell seeded scaffolds, using a rabbit Achilles tendon repair model. Dermal fibroblasts were, respectively, isolated from the dermis of regular rabbits or green fluorescence protein transgenic rabbits as the autologous and the allogeneic cell sources, respectively. The cell scaffolds and cell-free scaffolds were implanted to bridge a partial segmental defect of rabbit Achilles tendon. The engineered tendons were harvested at 7 and 13 months postsurgery for various examinations. The results showed that all three groups could achieve in vivo tendon regeneration similarly with slightly better tissue formation in autologous group than in other two groups, including better scaffold degradation and relatively thicker collagen fibrils. There were no statistically significant differences in mechanical parameters among three groups. This work demonstrated that allogeneic fibroblasts and scaffold alone are likely to be used for tendon tissue engineering.
authors.affiliation: 1 Department of Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery, Shanghai Key Laboratory of Tissue Engineering Research, Shanghai Ninth People's Hospital, National Tissue Engineering Center of China , Shanghai, P.R. China .
authors.forename: Wenbo
authors.initials: W
authors.lastname: Wang
authors.affiliation: 2 Department of Dermatology, Xinhua Hospital, Shanghai Jiao Tong University School of Medicine , Shanghai, P.R. China .
authors.forename: Dan
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Deng
authors.affiliation: 1 Department of Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery, Shanghai Key Laboratory of Tissue Engineering Research, Shanghai Ninth People's Hospital, National Tissue Engineering Center of China , Shanghai, P.R. China .
authors.forename: Bin
authors.initials: B
authors.lastname: Wang
authors.affiliation: 1 Department of Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery, Shanghai Key Laboratory of Tissue Engineering Research, Shanghai Ninth People's Hospital, National Tissue Engineering Center of China , Shanghai, P.R. China .
authors.forename: Guangdong
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Zhou
authors.affiliation: 1 Department of Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery, Shanghai Key Laboratory of Tissue Engineering Research, Shanghai Ninth People's Hospital, National Tissue Engineering Center of China , Shanghai, P.R. China .
authors.forename: WenJie
authors.initials: W
authors.lastname: Zhang
authors.affiliation: 1 Department of Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery, Shanghai Key Laboratory of Tissue Engineering Research, Shanghai Ninth People's Hospital, National Tissue Engineering Center of China , Shanghai, P.R. China .
authors.forename: Yilin
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Cao
authors.affiliation: 3 College of Textiles, Donghua University , Shanghai, P.R. China .
authors.forename: Peihua
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Zhang
authors.affiliation: 1 Department of Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery, Shanghai Key Laboratory of Tissue Engineering Research, Shanghai Ninth People's Hospital, National Tissue Engineering Center of China , Shanghai, P.R. China .
authors.forename: Wei
authors.initials: W
authors.lastname: Liu
mesh_terms: D000125:Achilles Tendon / Q000473:pathology* / Q000601:surgery / Q000648:ultrastructure; D000818:Animals; D001696:Biomechanical Phenomena; D048430:Cell Shape; D002474:Cell-Free System; D002478:Cells, Cultured; D003094:Collagen / Q000378:metabolism; D020405:Dermis / Q000166:cytology; D004195:Disease Models, Animal; D005347:Fibroblasts / Q000166:cytology; D010865:Pilot Projects; D011817:Rabbits; D012038:Regeneration; D023822:Tissue Engineering; D054457:Tissue Scaffolds / Q000737:chemistry*; D014182:Transplantation, Autologous; D014184:Transplantation, Homologous
chemical_list: D003094:Collagen
keywords: achilles tendon repair; allogeneic cells; autologous cells; cell-free scaffold; dermal fibroblasts