HHK Artificial Tendon And Genetically Modified Mesenchymal Stem Cells For Tendon Repair

The repair of a lacerated tendon is common surgery. In order to investigate the process and mechanism of tendon repair we addressed the effects of different techniques in tendon surgery with HHK artificial tendon on rabbit model of tendon repair. The results showed that both the "8" suture and weave suture are suitable to joint of HHK artificial tendon and the end of injured tendon, and reservation and suture of aponeurosis are good for repairing the injured tendon. The tensile stress of regenerative tendon reached 46.82% of normal tendon in the sixteenth week after HHK artificial tendon implantation by biomechanics method.The compatibility of human MSCs and HHK artificial tendon has been detected. Human MSCs adhered and grew well on the surface of HHK, and survived and grew in good status in the lixivium of HHK. These results make it clear that the artificial tendon has no significant toxicity to human MSCs and that it is biocompatible and suitable as scaffold material for tendon tissue engineering. In this study, two kinds of tissue-engineered tendon were constructed under simulated microgravity in the rotary cell culture system (RCCS), one is made of human MSCs and HHK artificial tendon (named MSCs/HHK tendon), the other is made of human tenocytes induced by BMP 12 gene and HHK artificial tendon (named induced tenocytes/HHK tendon). Compared with the two-dimensional culture condition, tissue-engineered tendon was constructed with facility in RCCS.MSCs/HHK tendon and induced tenocytes/HHK tendon was implanted to repair injured tendon in rabbit model, respectively. The results indicated that the degree of tendon regeneration in either of the two kinds of the tissue-engineered tendon was better than that of HHK artificial tendon, especially the induced tenocytes/HHKtendon. In order to realize further the role of BMP 12 gene in tendon regeneration, BMP 12 gene mediated by liposome was transferred into injured tendon in rabbit model. Associated with the increased expression of collagen I , the BMP 12 gene expression in regenerative tendon were observed in both BMP 12 gene induced tenocytes/HHK tendon and liposome mediated BMP 12 gene/HHK tendon. That suggested that BMP 12 gene played an important role in tendon regeneration by improving intrinsic healing and avoiding adhesion.