The research objective of this award is to integrate optical instrument designs, biomechanical, biochemical, and microstructure analyses to elucidate and characterize relationships between collagen fiber re-alignment and failure under dynamic loading conditions. This investigation will provide systematic engineering analyses and predictive models to enable the assessment of tissue injury and degeneration for better optimization of the recovery processes. The broader vision for the research is that it will culminate in synergistic activities between experimental and clinical efforts aimed at a breakthrough in clinical treatments of damaged tendon-to-bone insertions. This research will make important contributions to fields within health care, science, engineering, and society as a whole. To transfer the outcomes of this project outside of the academic community, the PIs will work with the NC Biotechnology Center. Through presentations to local companies and interaction with startup incubators, this experience will permit us not only to advertise these outcomes to companies in the field of tissue engineering, but also collect feedback from them on the experimental data essential to their technology development. The proposed research will form the basis of our graduate courses, including the basics of the structure of materials and biological aspects of tendon-to-bone insertion.
Tendon-to-bone insertions are functionally-graded connective tissues whose anisotropic biomechanical functions depend intimately on the regional biochemical composition and structure, thus functioning to alleviate stress concentration at the junction of these tissues. Studies conducted under this award will expose and quantify properties of tendon-to-bone insertions subjected to different magnitudes of loading, associated loading time-scales (e.g., strain rate), mutual interactions, as well as the order in which these events occur. In parallel, constitutive and finite element models will be developed to predict the response of tendon-to-bone insertions under different loading conditions.
