Morphofunctional characterization of decellularized vena cava as tissue engineering scaffolds

Abstract

Clinical experience for peripheral arterial disease treatment shows poor results whensynthetic grafts are used to approach infrapopliteal arterial segments. However, tissue engeneeringmay be an option to yield surrogate biocompatible neovessels. Thus, biological decellularized scaffoldscould provide natural tissue architecture to use in tissue engineering, when the absence of idealautologous veins reduces surgical options. The goal of this study was to evaluate different chemicalinduced decellularization protocols of the inferior vena cava of rabbits. They were decellularized withTriton X100 (TX100), Sodium Dodecyl Sulphate (SDS) or Sodium Deoxycholate (DS). Afterwards, weassessed the remaining extracellular matrix (ECM) integrity, residual toxicity and the biomechanicalresistance of the scaffolds. Our results showed that TX100 was not effective to remove the cells, whileprotocols using SDS 1% for 2h and DS 2% for 1h, efficiently removed the cells and were bettercharacterized. These scaffolds preserved the original organization of ECM. Additionally, the residualtoxicity assessment did not reveal statistically significant changes while decellularized scaffoldsretained the equivalent biomechanical properties when compared with the control. Our resultsconcluded that protocols using SDS and DS were effective at obtaining decellularized scaffolds, which may be useful for blood vessel tissue engineering. (AU)