TY  - JOUR
A1  - Kress, Sebastian
A1  - Baur, Johannes
A1  - Otto, Christoph
A1  - Burkard, Natalie
A1  - Braspenning, Joris
A1  - Walles, Heike
A1  - Nickel, Joachim
A1  - Metzger, Marco
T1  - Evaluation of a miniaturized biologically vascularized scaffold in vitro and in vivo
JF  - Scientific Reports
N2  - In tissue engineering, the generation and functional maintenance of dense voluminous tissues is mainly restricted due to insufficient nutrient supply. Larger three-dimensional constructs, which exceed the nutrient diffusion limit become necrotic and/or apoptotic in long-term culture if not provided with an appropriate vascularization. Here, we established protocols for the generation of a pre-vascularized biological scaffold with intact arterio-venous capillary loops from rat intestine, which is decellularized under preservation of the feeding and draining vascular tree. Vessel integrity was proven by marker expression, media/blood reflow and endothelial LDL uptake. In vitro maintenance persisted up to 7 weeks in a bioreactor system allowing a stepwise reconstruction of fully vascularized human tissues and successful in vivo implantation for up to 4 weeks, although with time-dependent decrease of cell viability. The vascularization of the construct lead to a 1.5× increase in cellular drug release compared to a conventional static culture in vitro. For the first time, we performed proof-of-concept studies demonstrating that 3D tissues can be maintained within a miniaturized vascularized scaffold in vitro and successfully implanted after re-anastomosis to the intrinsic blood circulation in vivo. We hypothesize that this technology could serve as a powerful platform technology in tissue engineering and regenerative medicine.
KW  - biological models
KW  - translational research
Y1  - 2018
U6  - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:bvb:20-opus-176343
VL  - 8
IS  - 4719
ER  -