Connecting Science to Medicine: Tendon-Like Tissue Created from Human Stem Cells
Published:24 Feb.2022    Source:Tokyo Medical and Dental University

Tendons are tissues that connect muscles to bones and are important for movement and locomotion. Injuries to tendons are quite common, with millions of people -- particularly athletes -- affected worldwide, and can often take many months to recover from, significantly impacting quality of life. Furthermore, while many options for treatment exist, none of them are perfect cures and many result in pain, immunogenicity, or long-term treatment failure. Therefore, a novel therapeutic strategy for tendon repair is needed.

 
In a study published in the Journal of Tissue Engineering in January 2022, researchers from Tokyo Medical and Dental University (TMDU) have successfully induced human stem cells to create artificial tendon-like tissue that mimics tendon properties and offers significantly improved tendon reconstruction in a mouse tendon-rupture model.