Grant: Operating Grant - PA: Musculoskeletal Health, Arthritis, Skin and Oral Health

We are endeavoring to generate ligament tissue to replace torn and defective anterior cruciate ligaments (ACL) in patients. Over 200,000 ACL replacements are performed in North America every year. The standard replacement is a tendon removed from the same patient. The major disadvantages of this approach are donor site morbidity, and long periods of time for the tendon graft to change into ligament tissue. Therefore, tissue engineered ligaments are being sought. Current ligament tissue engineering attempts have so far been unsuccessful in producing functional tissue replacements. We propose that a scaffold constructed to mimic the parallel array of collagen fibrils and the other matrix molecules present in the ligament would be required to grow an effective ligament.