Bioengineering the Pancreas: Cell-on-Scaffold Technology

Abstract

Nowadays, type I diabetes mellitus is a pathology afflicting millions of people globally with a dramatic assessment in the next future. Current treatments including exogenous insulin, pancreas transplantation and islets transplantation, are not free from important lifelong side effects. In the last decade, tissue engineering and regenerative medicine have shown encouraging results about the possibility to produce a functional bioengineered pancreas. Among many technologies, decellularization offers the opportunity to produce an organ-specific acellular matrix that could subsequently repopulate with endocrine cellular population. Herein, we aim to review the state-of-art and this technology highlighting the diabetes burden for the healthcare system and the major achievements toward the manufacturing of a bioengineered pancreas obtained by cell-on-scaffold technology.

Current Advances in 3D Tissue and Organ Reconstruction

“…Following this, many studies using a single type of tissue-specific stem cells [ 158 , 170 , 181 , 182 , 183 , 184 , 185 ] or induced pluripotent cells [ 185 , 186 , 187 , 188 ] were carried out, and others are currently ongoing, in order to identify the best 3D supports able to boost cell differentiation and successfully produce in vitro functional tissues and organs for future possible transplantation. In parallel, both synthetic and biological scaffolds were repopulated with terminally differentiated cells, including fibroblasts [ 155 ], mature hepatocytes [ 189 , 190 , 191 ], and pancreatic endocrine [ 192 , 193 , 194 ], cardiac [ 195 ], and ovarian cells [ 196 ].…”

Bioengineering the Vascularized Endocrine Pancreas: A Fine-Tuned Interplay Between Vascularization, Extracellular-Matrix-Based Scaffold Architecture, and Insulin-Producing Cells

“…A gradual loss of both graft function and insulin independence was observed within 5 years of islet implantation ( 7 , 8 , 11 ). Despite the short-term function, the results derived from the recipients demonstrated that reestablishing endocrine pancreatic function has the potential to restore fine endogenous control over glucose homeostasis, which cannot be precisely mimicked by closed-loop artificial pancreas devices ( 12 , 13 ).…”