Slicing, stacking and rolling: fabrication of nanostructured collagen constructs from tendon sections

A novel method for fabricating both multilayer stacked 2D and 3D tubular constructs composed of sheets of aligned collagen fibers is described. These structures are created by decellularizing native tendon and sectioning the material into thin sheets using a cryo-microtome. This fabrication method preserves the collagens natural strength as well as the fiber structure which would aid in directing aligned cell growth.