Electrospun Textile Strategies in Tendon to Bone Junction Reconstruction

Abstract

The repair of tendon to bone junction (TBJ) remains a tremendous challenge in tissue engineering due to the complicated structure, components, mechanical properties, and cell types. In order to reconstruct the tissue and restore its functionality, biomedical scaffolds with hierarchical and gradient structures have been fabricated by various strategies. In recent decades, electrospinning has become one of the most popular methods in fabricating TBJ scaffolds due to easy fabrication, high porosity, and ECM-like nano-scale structure. However, mechanical properties are the pain point of electrospun biomedical scaffolds. Traditional textile technology can be exploited to compensate for this weakness, which will be deeply discussed here. This review will start with a brief introduction to the structure and function of the native TBJ tissue and a short overview of electrospinning technology. Then, different electrospun biomedical scaffolds for TBJ repair will be summarized and compared. Furthermore, some advanced technologies and modification methods in fabricating functionalized electrospun TBJ scaffolds are discussed. In the end, current challenges and solutions are being proposed, which would provide instruction for the research of electrospun textile TBJ scaffolds.

Funding

Startup Grant of CityU(9380116); National Natural Science Foundation of China(15201719); Contract Research(9231419)