Basic Study
Copyright ©The Author(s) 2015. Published by Baishideng Publishing Group Inc. All rights reserved.
World J Stem Cells. Mar 26, 2015; 7(2): 521-534
Published online Mar 26, 2015. doi: 10.4252/wjsc.v7.i2.521
Mesenchymal stem cells and collagen patches for anterior cruciate ligament repair
Benjamin Gantenbein, Neha Gadhari, Samantha CW Chan, Sandro Kohl, Sufian S Ahmad
Benjamin Gantenbein, Neha Gadhari, Samantha CW Chan, Sufian S Ahmad, Tissue and Organ Mechanobiology, Institute for Surgical Technology and Biomechanics, University of Bern, CH-3014 Bern, Switzerland
Samantha CW Chan, EMPA, Swiss Federal Laboratories for Materials Science and Technology, 8600 Dübendorf, Switzerland
Sandro Kohl, Sufian S Ahmad, Orthopedic Department, Insel University Hospital, CH-3010 Bern, Switzerland
Author contributions: Gantenbein B collected the data, designed the study, prepared the manuscript and provided funding; Gadhari N contributed microscopy data; Chan SCW contributed to study design; Kohl S contributed to the study design; Ahmad SS edited the manuscript and provided funding.
Supported by A grant of the Swiss Orthopaedics Society (SGOT) to Ahmad SS, No. S99083814080618560.
Ethics approval: The study protocol was approved by local Ethical authorities.
Conflict-of-interest: The authors declare no conflicts of interest.
Data sharing: Technical appendix, statistical code, and dataset are available from the corresponding author (Benjamin.Gantenbein@istb.unibe.ch).
Open-Access: This article is an open-access article which was selected by an in-house editor and fully peer-reviewed by external reviewers. It is distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial (CC BY-NC 4.0) license, which permits others to distribute, remix, adapt, build upon this work non-commercially, and license their derivative works on different terms, provided the original work is properly cited and the use is non-commercial. See: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/
Correspondence to: Dr. Benjamin Gantenbein, Professor, Tissue and Organ Mechanobiology, Institute for Surgical Technology and Biomechanics, University of Bern, Stauffacherstrasse 78, CH-3014 Bern, Switzerland. benjamin.gantenbein@istb.unibe.ch
Telephone: +41-31-6315951 Fax: +41-31-6315960
Received: August 21, 2014
Peer-review started: August 22, 2014
First decision: September 4, 2014
Revised: October 30, 2014
Accepted: November 27, 2014
Article in press: December 1, 2014
Published online: March 26, 2015
Processing time: 210 Days and 11.9 Hours
Core Tip

Core tip: Commercially available porcine or bovine-derived collagen type I and type III patches are cytocompatible for anterior cruciate ligament derived tenocytes (ACL-TCs) and for bone-marrow derived mesenchymal stem cells (MSCs). The combination of commercially available collagen patches with MSCs and ACL-TCs seems to be suitable for application with a dynamic intraligamentary stabilization system, which represents a novel technique to fix a ruptured ACL. However, co-culture of MSCs with ACL-TCs did show signs of differentiation of MSCs towards a more TC-like phenotype after a short-term culture of 7 d.