Potential of a Bioscaffold to Enhance the Healing of the MCL Following a Mop-End Tear: An Animal Model Study

Isolated medial collateral ligament (MCL) injuries occur frequently (95,000 per year in the US) and heal with conservative treatment. Long-term clinical outcome is generally excellent because the structural properties of the Femur-MCL-Tibia complex (FMTC) naturally return to normal especially the stiffness. However, the quality of the healing ligament, as described by its histomorphological appearance, as well as biochemical, mechanical, and viscoelastic properties, remain poor [37, 70, 108, 109, 116]. Functional tissue engineering techniques such as the use of extracellular matrix (ECM) bioscaffolds have shown promise in improving healing of soft tissues after injury. In particular, small intestine submucosa (SIS) is especially attractive due to its chemoattractant properties, organized fiber alignment, and natural concentration of growth factors [9, 13, 48]. The objective of this thesis is to use SIS to improve MCL healing in a clinically relevant injury model. Sixteen New Zealand white rabbits were subjected to a mop-end tear (Weiss et al. 1991) in order to simulate a clinically relevant injury, which included damage to the ligament insertion sites, over-stretching of collagen fibers, and a frayed appearance of the torn ligament ends. After 12 weeks of healing, seven rabbits per group were euthanized and subjected to a well-established biomechanical testing protocol [111], including a load to failure test. The remaining rabbits (n=2 per group) were evaluated histologically. It was found that SIS treatment resulted in a marked improvement for the tangent modulus of the healing MCL midsubstance over non-treatment (404 ±120 MPa vs. 273 ± 91 MPa, respectively, p