WHAT AND WHY:
A graft that facilitates ACL/Rotator Cuff repair as the current method of screwing the torn tendon/ligament back to the bone is (as you can imagine) painful, expensive, and often results in re-tears.
SKILLS (non-technical): CAD, Sketching, 3D printing, Illustrator, Machine Shop: Lathe, Laser Cutter, Mill
OUTCOME: A novel device to produce woven grafts with gradient properties, which has not been reported before. These woven grafts are now being tested in injured horses (!) to evaluate their efficacy and begin the long road of “iteration” in medial products.
SHORT STORY: Rotator Cuff and ACL injuries are widely prevalent today, impacting all ages ranging from high school athletes to your grandparents. Unfortuatenly, the current repair technique involves screwing the remaining tendon back to the bone - as you can imagine, this is painful, expensive, and often results in re-tears. Our challenge is to develop a graft that has the same characteristics as a tendon/ligament, that can be added as a patch to the tear site and facilitate natural regeneration. This poses an interesting challenge, as tears often occur at the junction between the tendon and the bone - this site, known as the “enthesis” displays gradient behavior mimicing bone on one end, and tendon on the other. This requires 3 parallel gradients: a biochemical gradient (mineralized on the bone side, unmineralized on the tendon side), a mechanical gradient (rigid on the bone end, elastic on the tendon end), and a topographic gradient (unorganized on the bone end, aligned on the tendon end).