EFRI BioFlex: Electrically Mediated Complex Tissue Regeneration

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The proposal focuses on the creation of novel, electrically-stimulated, bioresorbable electrospun polymeric scaffolds capable of accelerating regeneration of musculoskeletal tissue, with a focus on rotator cuff healing. Tissue engineering has been applied to individual tissues like bone, ligament, tendon, cartilage, muscle, nerve, and blood vessels with a degree of success in the clinical realm. The complex task of full limb regeneration has been left to developmental biologists often studying invertebrates capable of self-regeneration. Lessons learned from scaffold-based tissue engineering can, when blended with developmental and stem cell-based biology and electrical engineering, be applied to the regeneration of complex organs and tissues. This construct will be structured and fine-tuned based on polyphosphazene chemistry, fiber size, and fiber orientation to create an electrically conductive scaffold that exhibits region-specific mechanical properties that mimic those seen in a native muscle-tendon interface. The system will be tested in a rabbit model in which the subscapularis tendon will be transected from the bone with or without transecting the subscapular nerve.