Electrospun Dual Scaffolding System with Potential for the Tissue Engineering of Muscle-Tendon Junctions

Abstract

Limb loss is a growing global problem. There are millions of people worldwide that suffer from limb loss and are in need of a prosthetic. In tissue engineering and regenerative medicine our goal is to one day be able to provide these patients with a fully functional limb instead of a prosthetic. Currently, we are far from realizing this goal. Nevertheless, there has been a large body of work in engineering tissues that are important for limb function such as skeletal muscle, tendon, bone, ligament, cartilage, nerve, and skin with varying amounts of success. To date there has been less work on composites of these tissues, although more is starting to be done. All these tissues will be important in one day developing functional limbs, but they must be combined into a functional unit if success is to be achieved. One critical component of the limb that we took interest in was the muscle-tendon junction (MTJ) because of its important function of transmitting force generated by skeletal muscle to a tendon across a joint resulting in joint movement and locomotion.