Future of Engineering

A new bioengineered anterior cruciate ligament (ACL) replacement could provide a new treatment option for the more than 200,000 Americans who rupture their ACLs annually, U.S. researchers report this week. Lead researcher Dr. Cato Laurencin, professor and chairman of orthopaedic surgery at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville, and his team used three-dimensional, braided polyester "scaffolds," that were sometimes seeded with cells taken from the animal's ACL as a replacement for ligaments surgically removed from the animal's knee. Both the cell-seeded and unseeded scaffolds worked well, Laurencin said, though the seeded scaffolds performed better. "Without cells, it takes longer [for the tissue to regenerate]," he said.

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Keywords: Bioengineered, anterior cruciate ligament (ACL), Cato Laurencin, orthopaedic, Charlottesville, Virginia, braided polyester "scaffolds, ligaments, tibia

Labels: Bio-engineering