PURPOSE To evaluate the tibial articular cartilage and histology of the posterior cruciate ligament (PCL) in osteoarthritic knees so as to determine predictors of PCL degeneration. METHODS 23 advanced osteoarthritic knees (mean patient age, 61 years) treated with total knee arthroplasty (TKA) were prospectively studied. The Knee Society Score was assessed. Osteoarthritic changes on radiograph...

Electroconductive scaffolds can be a promising approach to repair conductive tissues when natural healing fails. Recently, nerve tissue engineering constructs have been widely investigated due the challenges in creating structure with optimized physiochemical and mechanical properties close native tissue. The goal of current study was fabricate graphene-containing polycaprolactone/gelatin/polyp...

Nonlinear amphiphilic block copolymer architectures with precisely controlled structures bring new challenges to biomedical materials research. The paper describes the straightforward synthesis of new “snake tongue“ Y-shaped terpolymers containing poly(ethylene oxide) (PEO), poly(2-ethyl-2-oxazoline) (PEtOx) and poly(3-caprolactone) (PCL) blocks into structure [AB(C)2] (herein referred to as [M...

Genistein is one of the most studied isoflavonoids with potential antitumor efficacy, but its poor water solubility limits its clinical application. Nanoparticles (NPs), especially biodegradable NPs, entrapping hydrophobic drugs have promising applications to improve the water solubility of hydrophobic drugs. In this work, TPGS-b-PCL copolymer was synthesized from ε-caprolactone initiated by d-...

BACKGROUND The aim of this study was to fabricate the poly caprolactone (PCL) aligned nanofiber scaffold and to evaluate the survival, adhesion, proliferation, and differentiation of rat hair follicle stem cells (HFSC) in the graft material using electrospun PCL nanofiber scaffold for tissue engineering applications. METHODS The bulge region of rat whisker was isolated and cultured in DMEM: n...

The posterior cruciate ligament (PCL) is the largest and strongest ligament in the human knee, and the primary posterior stabilizer. Recent anatomy and biomechanical studies have provided an improved understanding of PCL function. PCL injuries are typically combined with other ligamentous, meniscal and chondral injuries. Stress radiography has become an important and validated objective measure...

The potential of constructs comprising induced pluripotent stem (iPS) cells and biopolymers can be high for neurological surgery practice, if the systematic activity of neuronal regeneration is clarified. This study shows a guided differentiation of iPS cells toward neurons in neuron growth factor (NGF)-grafted poly(ε-caprolactone) (PCL)-poly(β-hydroxybutyrate) (PHB) scaffolds. The porosity of ...

Small diameter arterial bypass grafts are considered as unmet clinical need since the current grafts have poor patency of 25% within 5 years. We have developed a 3D scaffold manufactured from natural and synthetic biodegradable polymers, poly(3-hydroxybutyrate-co-3-hydroxyvalerate) (PHBV) and poly(𝜀-caprolactone) (PCL), respectively. Further to improve the biophysical properties as well as endo...

BACKGROUND The posterior cruciate ligament (PCL) plays an important role in maintaining physiological kinematics and function of the knee joint. To date mainly in-vitro models or combined magnetic resonance and fluoroscopic systems have been used for quantifying the importance of the PCL. We hypothesized, that both tibiofemoral and patellofemoral kinematic patterns are changed in PCL-deficient ...

Drug-eluting vascular prostheses represent a new direction in vascular surgery to reduce early thrombosis and late intimal hyperplasia for small calibre grafts. Subcutaneous implantation in rats is a rapid and cost-effective screening model to assess the drug-elution effect and could, to some extent, be useful to forecast results for vascular prostheses. We compared biological and histological ...