New Way to Repair Damaged Tendons and Muscles Found The typical office worker often suffers from body aches due to sedentary office hours. Even young adults can experience shoulder pain that was previously mostly a problem for older adults. Once shoulder pain hits, it can be difficult to get dressed, let alone move freely. It was also difficult to fall asleep. Tendon cuffs are often damaged naturally as we age, but repairing them has proven difficult. The Pukang University of Technology team, in collaboration with Choi Hak-soo, a professor at Harvard Medical School, has developed a complex tissue platform for repairing shoulder girdle injuries. The platform precisely replicates the complex structure of the cuff of the rotating arm and uses tissue-specific extracellular matrix bio-ink for 3D bioprinting.
Bioactive Materials recently published the results of the study, which may offer new hope for people with chronic shoulder pain. The team transplanted the platform into rats with full-thickness rotator cuff injuries. The researchers observed tissue regeneration and recovery of shoulder function. It turns out that the platform, which contains stem cells, can actually regenerate the rotator cuff. Notably, the researchers combined tissue-specific bioimaging agents with near-infrared fluorescence imaging to visualize this process. Researchers were able to use this technique to monitor anatomical changes and regenerative processes in animal models in real time, in a non-invasive manner. This platform provides a microenvironment and components similar to the actual organization. Therefore, once applied to patients, it is expected to obtain higher therapeutic benefits and ultimately restore shoulder joint function. Providing a customized treatment plan is especially beneficial for those patients who cannot use autologous tissue to regenerate the rotator cuff. The research was supported by the Nanomaterials Core Technology Development Program of the National Research Foundation of Korea and the National Institute of Biomedical Imaging and Bioengineering (NIBIB) in the United States. What is bio-ink? Bio-ink is a material made from living cells that behaves like a liquid and can be "printed" to produce a desired shape. The material was developed by researchers at the University of Missouri in Columbia with the aim of one day being able to do things like print replacements for organ failure. The technology is only in the early stages of testing and development, but it shows promise. To make the bio-ink, scientists created a cell slurry that could be loaded into another cartridge that contained a gel called bio-paper, which was then inserted into a specially designed
printer. After entering the criteria for what they want to print, the researchers trigger the printer, and the ink cartridges alternate to build the three-dimensional structure, with the biopaper creating a support matrix that allows the ink to flourish. Through a process that is not yet fully understood, the individual droplets fuse together and eventually travel up the bio-paper upward grid to form a solid structure. Understanding this process and the time points at which cells differentiate to accomplish different tasks is an important part of creating usable materials. Perhaps one day, hospitals will be able to use it to generate tissues and organs for use by patients. The most obvious potential use of bio-inks is in skin grafting. With this technology, the lab can quickly create skin for burn victims and others who may need transplants. By creating a graft derived from a patient's own cells, the risk of rejection and scarring can be reduced. Bioinks can also be used to replace vascular material removed during surgery, allowing people to receive new veins and arteries. Eventually, entire organs could be made from this material. With organs in short supply worldwide, bio-inks have the potential to save countless lives as patients will no longer have to wait on transplant lists for new organs. Using these organs can also alleviate concerns about organ contamination or unethical organ harvesting methods.