engineered healing of avascular meniscus tears by stem cell recruitment meniscus injuries are extremely common with approximately one million patients undergoing surgical treatment annually in the us alone upon injury the outer zone of the meniscus can be repaired and expected to functionally heal but tears in the inner avascular region are unlikely to heal to date no regenerative therapy has been proven successful for consistently promoting healing in innerzone meniscus tears here we show that controlled applications of connective tissue growth factor ctgf and transforming growth factor beta 3 tgf3 can induce seamless healing of avascular meniscus tears by inducing recruitment and stepwise differentiation of synovial mesenchymal stemprogenitor cells symscs a shortterm release of ctgf a selected chemotactic and profibrogenic cue successfully recruited symscs into the incision site and formed an integrated fibrous matrix sustainreleased tgf3 then led to a remodeling of the intermediate fibrous matrix into fibrocartilaginous matrix fully integrating incised meniscal tissues with improved functional properties our data may represent a novel clinically relevant strategy to improve healing of avascular meniscus tears by recruiting endogenous stemprogenitor cells