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Our group has been engineering cell-scaffold constructs to improve tendon repair by contracting mesenchymal stem cells (MSCs) in collagen gels and then evaluating their repair potential in wound sites in rabbits. Because the construct's initial conditions may influence the ultimate repair outcome, this two-part study sought to distinguishwhich factorsmost influence contraction kinetics in culture. (1)We optically determined if varying cell-to-collagen ratio significantly affected construct contraction. Temporal changes in construct area were monitored up to 168 h for 4 cell-to-collagen ratios (HK= 0.04, LK= 0.08, HM= 0.4, and LM= 0.8, whereH, L= 2.6, 1.3mg/mL collagen andK,M= 0.1, 1million cells/mL, respectively).Amathematicalmodel was created with terms that represent the different combinations of cell densities and collagen concentrations in order to predict the contraction kinetics as a function of time. Highly …