Recellularizing a Rat Thymus with Human Thymic Epithelial Cells Produces a Functional Thymus

Decellularization followed by recellularization is a well explored approach to tissue engineering. Researchers take a donor organ or tissue section, decellularize it to leave the intricate extracellular matrix and all of its chemical cues, and then recellularize with with the desired mix of cells. When those cells are derived from a patient, it is possible to generate tissue that can be transplanted into that patient with minimal risk of rejection. There are also groups working on enabling cross-species transplantation from pigs to humans via this strategy of replacing all of the cells in an organ with patient-matched cells. Further, recellularization can bypass the major challenge of vascular network creation in tissue engineering. Natural tissues contain extensive capillary networks, hundreds of tiny blood vessels passing through every square millimeter of tissue cross-section. Without capillaries, tissue cannot be more than a millimeter or two in thickness, as cells will not be able to receive nutrients. Capillary networks have so far proven challenging to produce at the fine scale needed via bioprinting of entirely artificial tissue structures, though some inroads have been made in recent years. A decellularized extracellular matrix contains those capillaries already. This is not to say that recellularization of a decelluralized tissue is straightforward. Just like the production of organoids, small functional organ tissue sections grown from cells, a recipe...
Source: Fight Aging! - Category: Research Authors: Tags: Medicine, Biotech, Research Source Type: blogs