The role of decellularised ECM proteins in the biological direction of ligament cells on a polymer/ECM scaffold

前交叉韧带（ACL）损伤占所有运动相关手术的40%。通常使用自体移植物，然而这些移植物具有几个缺点。目前的合成韧带由于失效而具有较低的临床应用。可降解聚合物如PCL的静电纺丝可用于制造模拟韧带结构的对齐结构。然而，虽然提供了良好的物理和地形线索，他们缺乏生物线索，刺激矩阵的生产。我们假设，通过制造可降解聚合物和细胞外基质（来自脱细胞韧带）的电纺杂交物，这些将提供物理和生物学线索，并增强韧带愈合。有趣的是，文献显示，ECM粉末的添加增加了聚合物纤维的拉伸强度。合成韧带的机械性能对其作为韧带修复技术的潜力以及其刺激有效基质产生的能力至关重要。

Anterior cruciate ligament (ACL) injuries account for 40% of all sports-related procedures. Typically an autograft is used however these come with several disadvantages. Current synthetic ligaments have low clinical uptake due to failures. Electrospinning of degradable polymers such as PCL can be used to fabricate aligned structures that mimic the ligament architecture. However, while providing good physical and topographical cues they lack biological cues to stimulate matrix production. We hypothesise that by fabricating electrospun hybrids of degradable polymer and extracellular matrix (from decellularised ligament) these will provide both physical and biological cues and enhance ligament healing.Similar hybrids have been used for other applications, but not yet for ligament. Interestingly the literature shows that the addition of ECM powder increases the tensile strength of the polymer fibres. The mechanical properties of the synthetic ligaments are critical to their potential as a ligament repair technology, aswell as their ability to stimulate effective matrix production.