The use of nanotechnology in tendon regeneration and repair.

Tendon injuries are common and due to their limited capacity for self-healing, the biomechanical and functional properties of healed tendon are usually inferior to normal tissue. Tissue engineering offers the hope of regenerating tendon tissue with the same biomechanical properties of the native undamaged tissue by augmenting the regenerative process of in vivo tissue or producing a functional tissue in vitro that can be implanted into the defective tendon site. Current research on tendon tissue engineering has focused on the role of stem cell and tendon derived cell therapy, scaffolds, chemical and physical stimulation and gene-therapeutic approaches. In this review we review the important functional anatomy and pathomechanics of tendon injury and discuss the current advances in tendon tissue engineering.