Insights on the Role of Stem Cells in Tendon Tissue Engineering: From Basic Science to Translational Medicine

Dear Colleagues,

Tendon injuries remain difficult to manage due to their poor healing ability, ascribable to a low cellularity and hypo-vascularity, leading to scar tissue formation, instead of organized extracellular matrix, thus affecting tendon biomechanical functionality. The currently applied treatments, including exercise, drug delivery, and surgical procedures, are not sufficient for a complete regeneration, which implies the development of promising strategies with the aim to deal with this pathology. To this end, cell-based therapy and tissue engineering represent challenging approaches for the regeneration of damaged tendon tissues with the aim to stimulate self-regeneration or to produce functional implantable tissue replacements. In particular, tissue engineering belongs to a multidisciplinary field that involves the use of a combination of key factors, such as cells, scaffolds, and biochemical and mechanical inputs i) to realize in vitro models and ii) to produce functional tissue-like constructs able to support damaged tissue, inducing its functional recovery. The combinatory effect of two or more factors seems to play a key role in boosting the tendon differentiation of stem cells.

This Special Issue will cover a selection of papers related to the use of stem cells in the development of in vitro 3D bioengineered complex models to understand the specific behavior of tendon healing and regeneration, as well as their translational potential in in vivo models.

Dr. Maria Camilla Ciardulli
Prof. Dr. Nicola Maffulli
Guest Editors

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