From Tendon Injury to Collagen-based Tendon Regeneration: Overview and Recent Advances

Tendon injury is a clinical, societal and economical issue. Moreover, tendon repair represents an important clinical challenge, partly due to the mechanical constraints that occur at the junctions with muscle and bone. Several strategies have been developed for tendon repair. In this review, we first assess the importance of tendon injuries from different sites and their causes. After a short overview of tendon three-dimensional organization, the complexity of the perfect repair quest is presented ranging from current clinical procedures to new engineering scaffolds. We then sum up tendon engineering requirements and focus on new collagen-based scaffolds, which raise promising prospects to mimic and repair tendon. In particular, we survey quantitatively a large panel of techniques to produce these scaffolds, detailing their principle and recent improvements.