Due to the increasing age of our society and a rise in engagement of young people in extreme and/or competitive sports, both tendinopathies and tendon ruptures present a clinical and financial challenge. Tendon has limited natural healing capacity and often responds poorly to treatments, hence it requires prolonged rehabilitation in most cases. Till today, none of the therapeutic options has provided successful long-term solutions, meaning that repaired tendons do not recover their complete strength and functionality. Our understanding of tendon biology and healing increases only slowly and the development of new treatment options is insufficient.

In this review, following discussion on tendon structure, healing and the clinical relevance of tendon injury, we aim to elucidate the role of stem cells in tendon healing and discuss new possibilities to enhance stem cell treatment of injured tendon. To date, studies mainly apply stem cells, often in combination with scaffolds or growth factors, to surgically created tendon defects. Deeper understanding of how stem cells and vasculature in the healing tendon react to growth factors, common drugs used to treat injured tendons and promising cellular boosters could help to develop new and more efficient ways to manage tendon injuries.

由于我们社会年龄的增长以及年轻人参与极限和/或竞技运动的增加，肌腱病变和肌腱断裂都提出了临床和财务挑战。肌腱的自然愈合能力有限，通常对治疗的反应较差，因此在大多数情况下需要长时间的康复。直到今天，没有任何一种治疗方法能够提供成功的长期解决方案，这意味着修复后的肌腱无法恢复其完整的强度和功能。我们对肌腱生物学和愈合的理解仅是缓慢增长，而新的治疗方案的开发还不够。

在这篇综述中，在对肌腱结构，愈合和肌腱损伤的临床相关性进行讨论之后，我们旨在阐明干细胞在肌腱愈合中的作用，并讨论增强对受损肌腱的干细胞治疗的新可能性。迄今为止，研究主要将干细胞（通常与支架或生长因子结合）应用于手术产生的肌腱缺损。深入了解愈合肌腱中的干细胞和脉管系统如何对生长因子作出反应，用于治疗受伤肌腱的常用药物以及有前途的细胞增强剂可以帮助开发新的更有效的方法来处理肌腱损伤。