Balgrist, University Hospital Zurich, University of Zurich

1 ARTICLES PUBLISHED IN JoVE

Bioengineering

Engineering Tendon Assembloids to Probe Cellular Crosstalk in Disease and Repair

Tino Stauber^1,2, Maja Wolleb^1,2, Jess G. Snedeker^1,2

¹Department of Orthopedics, Balgrist, University Hospital Zurich, University of Zurich, ²Department of Health Sciences and Technology, Institute for Biomechanics, ETH Zurich

Here, we present an assembloid model system to mimic tendon cellular crosstalk between the load-bearing tendon core tissue and an extrinsic compartment containing cell populations activated by disease and injury. As an important use case, we demonstrate how the system can be deployed to probe disease-relevant activation of extrinsic endothelial cells.