The anterior cruciate ligament (ACL) is critical for knee stability when walking or running. Unfortunately, it does not heal well after significant tearing or rupture and surgery is often necessary to reconstruct the injured ligament. Though ACL ruptures are quite common, the surgical repair of this ligament has inconsistent success rates [1]. The goal of this study was to characterize a biomimetic tissue engineered ACL scaffold using a novel combination braid-twist technique. The braid-twist scaffolds were made using the following procedure:
• Nine groups of six 160 mm length PLLA fibers were selected.
• Each group of six fibers was twisted in a counter-clockwise manner to form a fiber bundle (a total of nine fiber bundles/scaffold).
• Three of these bundles were twisted around one another counter-clockwise to form a yarn (a total of three yarns/scaffold).
• These three yarns were braided together to form one scaffold. This technique is based on the structure of ACL tissue and is designed to reduce scaffold fatigue and accurately mimic ACL behavior.
