Understanding Degeneration and Healing Pathways for Tissue-Engineered Treatment Strategies in Tendinopathy.

Background: The multidisciplinary nature of the tendon tissue engineering field brings challenges to move from our basic understanding of tendon biology towards engineering strategies for tendon disorders. Such pathologies present a high risk of inflammation for young patients and limited tissue regeneration capability in ageing patients, leading to painful symptoms and impaired quality of life.

Summary: Among the complications observed in tendinopathy are degenerative changes in the extracellular matrix and aberrant tissue remodelling, accounting for a huge burden in musculoskeletal disorders worldwide. This underscores the need for early therapeutic interventions to address tissue degeneration effectively. Moreover, the development of novel therapies lacks insufficient tendinopathy models to search drug efficacy or to model healthy and pathological tissue growth events in physiologically relevant microenvironments.

Key messages: This review focuses on current treatments for tendinopathy, the biological signals involved in tendon healing, and overlook tissue engineering developments in the field.