TheraMicro
Engineering a New Benchmark in Soft Tissue Reinforcement

Every year, thousands of ligament and tendon repairs are performed with the same objective: restore stability while supporting the natural biomechanics and biologic processes that guide healing. As soft tissue reinforcement has evolved over the past decade, surgeons have gained access to a growing range of augmentation technologies, each designed to improve repair outcomes. Over time, the industry has embraced three distinct engineering philosophies:

1. Technologies that prioritize strength, providing maximum reinforcement.
2. Technologies that prioritize flexibility, emphasizing load sharing.
3. Technologies that prioritize resorption, providing temporary support.

Each of these approaches has advanced the field, yet each asks surgeons to balance trade-offs between mechanical performance, biological integration, and long-term function.

TheraMicro, a sports medicine and orthopedic medical device company, questioned whether that compromise was necessary in the first place.

Instead of asking whether reinforcement should be stronger, more flexible, or temporary, the company began by examining how healthy ligaments and tendons behave under physiological loading. Rather than optimizing a single performance characteristic, TheraMicro set out to understand the natural biomechanics of healthy connective tissue and use those principles to guide every engineering decision.

That approach led to another question: What if reinforcement could behave more like healthy tissue itself? The answer became TeKBrace™, a soft tissue reinforcement platform engineered to restore mechanical balance while supporting the biology of healing.

“Our objective was never simply to create another augmentation option, but to establish a new benchmark for soft tissue reinforcement by challenging the trade-offs that have historically existed between strength, flexibility and long-term support,” says John Wells, Sr. Vice President.

Engineering Tissue-Like Performance

TheraMicro recognized that innovation did not require the development of a new biomaterial. Instead, the company selected medical-grade polyethylene terephthalate (PET), a well-established polyester with a long history of clinical use, and focused its innovation on how that material was engineered. This engineering approach shaped TeKBrace™ into a novel, non-resorbable scaffold designed to more closely replicate the biomechanics of healthy ligaments and tendons through its architecture, mechanical behavior, and biologic receptiveness.

Guided by the science of healing, the company recognized the relationship between mechanics and biology and viewed the scaffold not simply as passive reinforcement, but as part of the healing environment. The approach was to provide durable mechanical support while creating conditions that allow the body's own tissue to infiltrate and integrate with the scaffold.

Every aspect of the scaffold, from fiber orientation and weave geometry to porosity and thickness, was developed to influence how the implant behaves throughout the healing process. Instead of maximizing a single property, these characteristics were engineered to function together as an integrated system.

The scaffold's open-weave architecture features interconnected pores that support fluid transfer and tissue ingrowth while maintaining permanent mechanical reinforcement.

For TheraMicro, disruption is not simply about developing another implant or introducing another material. It begins with understanding how the body naturally functions and asking how engineering can work alongside it to improve patient care.

Unlike resorbable scaffolds that gradually lose structural support as they are absorbed, transferring mechanical demand back to the repair, TeKBrace™ remains in place, allowing the scaffold to function alongside native tissue while the body's own tissue infiltrates and integrates within its porous structure.

The result is a scaffold whose performance is defined not by the material alone, but by the way that material has been structured and engineered for its intended function.

This reflects a systems-based approach to soft tissue reinforcement. TheraMicro did not invent polyester. It reinvented what polyester could become.

Designed Between the Extremes

Soft tissue reinforcement technologies have traditionally been engineered around different mechanical priorities. Some constructs prioritize maximum stiffness to resist elongation, while others demonstrate greater flexibility. TheraMicro approached the mechanical design of TeKBrace™ by looking to native tissue as the benchmark, seeking to understand how healthy tendons and ligaments behave under physiological loading.

The company's design process centered on identifying an elasticity profile that more closely reflects the mechanical behavior of native ligaments. Rather than preventing movement altogether or allowing excessive deformation, TeKBrace™ was engineered to deliver controlled elongation within a physiologic range, supporting gradual load transfer while maintaining repair stability. This balance is intended to preserve the mechanical cues that guide tissue remodeling while allowing the repair to remain supported throughout healing.

The same philosophy shaped the scaffold's physical profile. Thickness was treated as a functional design parameter rather than a dimensional specification. A reinforcement scaffold must not only provide mechanical support but also maintain a stable profile under tension, conform closely to native tissue, and minimize implant prominence throughout healing.

“The objective was to create a broad, low-profile scaffold that conforms closely to native tissue and distributes loads across the repair without introducing unnecessary implant bulk,” says Stewart Guenther, Director of Marketing.

Rather than optimizing individual performance characteristics in isolation, TheraMicro balances elasticity, profile, strength and load-sharing behavior within a single scaffold. The result is a reinforcement platform engineered to support physiological function while maintaining the mechanical reliability required throughout the healing process.

Built for the Operating Room

While the scaffold architecture forms the foundation of the technology, TeKBrace™ was developed as a complete surgical platform integrating reinforcement, biologic augmentation, and procedure-specific instrumentation into a system that can be adapted to different soft tissue procedures while supporting efficient surgical workflow.

The platform is built around procedure-specific surgical kits that bring together the TeKBrace™ implant, knotless anchor fixation and single-use instrumentation selected for the requirements of each repair or reconstruction. TeKBrace™ implants are offered in different lengths and configurations based on the anatomy and surgical technique, while the accompanying fixation and instrumentation are designed around the specific procedure. Preassembled components and a ready-to-use inserter assembly are intended to streamline surgical preparation, while EasyThread implant tails simplify anchor eyelet threading. Corded scaffold ends provide controlled tensioning and implant orientation during implantation, helping surgeons position and tension the construct.

“Collectively, these features were developed to reduce procedural complexity while supporting efficient, reproducible implantation across different surgical techniques,” says Wells.

The technology has been developed for a range of sports medicine applications involving tendon and ligament repair, particularly within extremity orthopedics. Current procedure-specific solutions support repairs and reconstructions of the anterior talofibular ligament (ATFL), deltoid ligament, spring ligament, Achilles tendon, and collateral ligaments within the knee. While the underlying TeKBrace™ technology remains consistent, each procedural solution is configured around specific implant configurations and fixation options to address different anatomical and surgical requirements.

Together, the scaffold, mechanical performance, biologic integration options and procedure-specific solutions form a comprehensive reinforcement platform rather than a collection of individual products. By combining biomechanical design with practical surgical workflow considerations, TheraMicro has built an ecosystem that extends its systems-based engineering philosophy from the scaffold itself to the surgical experience.



A New Class of Reinforcement Scaffold

TheraMicro's greatest innovation may not be the scaffold itself, but the engineering philosophy that shaped it. Rather than beginning with a new material or pursuing isolated performance gains, the company started by asking a different set of questions: How do healthy ligaments and tendons function? How can reinforcement support the natural relationship between mechanics and healing? And how can biomechanics, material architecture and biology work together to improve soft tissue repair? Those questions ultimately guided the development of TeKBrace™ and continue to influence the company's broader approach to innovation.

Instead of optimizing a single characteristic such as strength, elasticity or resorption, TheraMicro has engineered an integrated reinforcement system designed to restore mechanical balance, support tissue integration and simplify the surgical experience. By focusing on how healthy tissues behave rather than how implants have traditionally been designed, the company has challenged conventional thinking in soft tissue reinforcement and established what TheraMicro believes is a new benchmark for the category.

With this foundation in place, TheraMicro envisions the platform extending well beyond its current applications. The company is continuing to develop additional procedure-specific kits, simplify surgical workflows and expand TeKBrace™ across a broader range of extremity procedures, making its biomechanics driven reinforcement philosophy accessible to more surgeons.

More broadly, the same biology-first, science-led engineering approach is helping shape future innovations across the company's portfolio. For TheraMicro, disruption is not simply about developing another implant or introducing another material. It begins with understanding how the body naturally functions and asking how engineering can work alongside it to improve patient care.