The limited ability of tendon to self-repair and the limitation of treatment
regimes have hastened the motivation to develop cell-based strategies for tendon
repair. Growth factors (GFs) such as EGF, FGF, PDGF and TGF-β participate in
tendon formation, ECM synthesis or healing, and may assist tenogenic
differentiation. Thus, this work aims to establish culturing conditions that induce
tenogenic differentiation of human adipose stem cells (hASCs) using these GFs.