# Adhesive materials for tendon-to-bone repair

> **NIH NIH R21** · COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY HEALTH SCIENCES · 2020 · $209,189

## Abstract

ABSTRACT
More than half of the elderly population suffers from shoulder dysfunction and pain caused by rotator cuff
injury, typically a tear of one or more of the rotator cuff tendons. Surgical repair of the rotator cuff is one of the
most common orthopedic surgical procedures, with over 250,000 repairs performed each year in the United
States. The goal of surgical repair is to create a strong and tough attachment between the ruptured tendon and
bone in order to recover shoulder function. Unfortunately, the healthy attachment system is not recreated with
current suture-based surgical techniques and is not regenerated during healing, leading to high failure rates
post-operatively. These failures are primarily due to the repair techniques used to secure tendon to bone;
instead of distributing muscle loads across a wide attachment footprint area, as in the healthy attachment,
surgical repairs concentrate stress on a small number of suture anchor points. These stress concentrations
lead to pullout of the suture from the tendon, motivating the development of technologies that distribute
stresses away from suture anchors and across the attachment footprint. Motivated by this clinical problem, we
implemented models and proof-of-concept experiments demonstrating that mechanically-optimized adhesive
films can better distribute loads across the interface between tendon and bone and dramatically increase the
load tolerance of a tendon-to-bone repair. In the current project, we advance this prior theoretical and proof-of-
concept work to develop a biologically relevant adhesive for enhanced rotator cuff repair. The overall objective
is to improve tendon-to-bone surgical repair outcomes through adhesive biomaterial approaches. We will take
a bioinspired approach to achieve this goal: adhesives will be modeled after marine organism adhesion
biochemistry. Specifically, mussel-inspired catechol-derived adhesives will be tested using in vitro and in vivo
models. We hypothesize that catechol-derived adhesives will increase the initial repair strength and toughness
and allow for improved tendon-to-bone healing. This will be tested across two aims: Aim 1: Develop mussel-
inspired catechol-derived adhesives with appropriate mechanical properties for tendon-to-bone repair and
evaluate their biocompatibility in vitro. Aim 2: Determine the efficacy of the mussel-inspired catechol-derived
adhesive for improved tendon-to-bone healing in vivo. In the long term, the interposed adhesive could be
modified to carry bioactive factors and/or stem cells. In addition to the mechanical augmentation to be studied
in the current proposal, these factors may further enhance the long-term healing potential of the tendon-to-
bone attachment.

## Key facts

- **NIH application ID:** 9973210
- **Project number:** 5R21AR076008-02
- **Recipient organization:** COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY HEALTH SCIENCES
- **Principal Investigator:** Kollbe Ahn
- **Activity code:** R21 (R01, R21, SBIR, etc.)
- **Funding institute:** NIH
- **Fiscal year:** 2020
- **Award amount:** $209,189
- **Award type:** 5
- **Project period:** 2019-07-05 → 2022-06-30

## Primary source

NIH RePORTER: https://reporter.nih.gov/project-details/9973210

## Citation

> US National Institutes of Health, RePORTER application 9973210, Adhesive materials for tendon-to-bone repair (5R21AR076008-02). Retrieved via AI Analytics 2026-05-22 from https://api.ai-analytics.org/grant/nih/9973210. Licensed CC0.

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