Collagen

these structures often fail to create tissues with mechanical properties on a par with native tissue, result-patients suffering from injured or diseased fibrocartilage, the need for an effective remedy is crucial. Fibrocartilages engineered in vitro offer new hope as a long-term treatment option to repair or replace injured or degenerated fibrocartilaginous tissues. Collagens make up the majority of the extracellular matrix (ECM) of a fibrocartilaginous tissue. Within a specific fibrocartilage, these collagen fibers align with the peak tensile loads in a given self-assembly approach to cartilage tissue engineering has been developed [4]. With primary TMJ disc and intervertebral disc cells presenting as an implausible cell source due to limited cell num-bers in the tissue, as well as low levels of matrix production in vitro, this technology has recently been extended to co-cultures of varying ratios of meniscus cells (MCs) and articular chondro-cytes (ACs), allowing for the formation of a spectrum of fibrocarti-lages [5–7]. While current efforts to tissue engineer fibrocartilage have succeeded in creating constructs with compressive properties on a par with native tissue values, tensile properties have lagge