Department of Orthopaedic Surgery, University of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh, PA 15213, USA.
Biomaterials. 2011 Oct;32(29):6972-81. doi: 10.1016/j.biomaterials.2011.05.088. Epub 2011 Jun 23.
When injured, tendons tend to heal but with poor structure and compromised function. Tissue engineering is a promising approach to enhancing the quality of healing tendons. Our group and others have identified tendon stem cells (TSCs), a type of tendon-specific stem cells which may be optimal for cellular interventions seeking to restore normal structure and function to injured tendons. However, in vitro expanding of TSCs on regular plastic cell culture dishes only yields a limited number of TSCs before they lose the stemness, i.e., the self-renewal capability and multipotency. In this study, we developed a substrate material for TSCs, engineered tendon matrix (ETM) from decellularized tendon tissues. We showed that ETM in vitro was able to stimulate TSC proliferation and better preserve the stemness of TSCs than plastic culture surfaces. In vivo, implantation of ETM-TSC composite promoted tendon-like tissue formation whereas implantation of TSCs alone led to little such tissue formation. Together, the findings of this study indicate that ETM may be used to effectively expand TSCs in vitro and with TSCs, to enhance repair of injured tendons in vivo.
受伤后，肌腱往往会愈合，但结构和功能受损。组织工程是一种很有前途的方法，可以提高愈合肌腱的质量。我们的研究小组和其他研究小组已经鉴定出肌腱干细胞（TSC），这是一种肌腱特异性干细胞，可能是细胞干预的最佳选择，旨在恢复受伤肌腱的正常结构和功能。然而，在常规塑料细胞培养皿上体外扩增 TSC 只能在它们失去干性（即自我更新能力和多能性）之前获得有限数量的 TSC。在这项研究中，我们开发了一种 TSC 的基质材料，即脱细胞肌腱组织的工程化肌腱基质（ETM）。我们发现，与塑料培养表面相比，ETM 能够在体外刺激 TSC 增殖，并更好地保持 TSC 的干性。在体内，植入 ETM-TSC 复合物可促进肌腱样组织形成，而单独植入 TSC 则几乎不会形成这种组织。总之，这项研究的结果表明，ETM 可用于有效地在体外扩增 TSC，并与 TSC 一起，增强体内受损肌腱的修复。
