本期 Scientific Reports 上发表了治疗小鼠肌腱受伤的一种方法。这项研究对用于生成人工肌腱的胎儿和成年小鼠的成纤维细胞（结缔组织细胞）进行了比较，发现当采用胎儿细胞而不是成年细胞时，肌腱组织的再生会得到增强。

    肌腱康复经常伴随着会影响组织的机械强度的一个疤痕的形成。成年肌腱不会通过再生过程康复，而胎儿肌腱则能以再生方式康复，且不形成疤痕。因此，Xiao Chen及同事对胎儿细胞是否适于用作肌腱组织工程疗法的种子细胞进行了研究。他们发现，用从胎儿成纤维细胞生长出的组织对受损的小鼠跟腱进行治疗，与用从成年小鼠的成纤维细胞生成的组织进行治疗相比，会导致更好的结构和机械性能。

    作者指出，在将这一方法应用于人类细胞之前还有一些问题需要解决，因为适合的人类胎儿成纤维细胞难以获得。他们提出，还需要进一步的研究来了解胎儿成纤维细胞怎样改善组织再生。这种信息也许有助于制定用于治疗肌腱受伤的未来策略。

Injured adult tendons do not exhibit optimal healing through a regenerative process, whereas fetal tendons can heal in a regenerative fashion without scar formation. Hence, we compared FFs (mouse fetal fibroblasts) and AFs (mouse adult fibroblasts) as seed cells for the fabrication of scaffold-free engineered tendons. Our results demonstrated that FFs had more potential for tendon tissue engineering, as shown by higher levels of tendon-related gene expression. In the in situ AT injury model, the FFs group also demonstrated much better structural and functional properties after healing, with higher levels of collagen deposition and better microstructure repair. Moreover, fetal fibroblasts could increase the recruitment of fibroblast-like cells and reduce the infiltration of inflammatory cells to the injury site during the regeneration process. Our results suggest that the underlying mechanisms of better regeneration with FFs should be elucidated and be used to enhance adult tendon healing. This may assist in the development of future strategies to treat tendon injuries.