Perspectives on whole-organ assembly: moving toward transplantation on demand

Abstract

There is an ever-growing demand for transplantable organs to replace acute and chronically damaged tissues. This demand cannot be met by the currently available donor organs. Efforts to provide an alternative source have led to the development of organ engineering, a discipline that combines cell biology, tissue engineering, and cell/organ transplantation. Over the last several years, engineered organs have been implanted into rodent recipients and have shown modest function. In this article, we summarize the most recent advances in this field and provide a perspective on the challenges of translating this promising new technology into a proven regenerative therapy.Conflict of interest: Thomas W. Gilbert served on the scientific advisory board of ACell Inc. during the writing of this manuscript. Since acceptance of the manuscript, he became the Vice President of Research and Development at ACell Inc., which commercializes ECM from porcine urinary bladder for clinical use in tissue repair. Jason A. Wertheim reports expenses paid by Cellular Dynamics International for research-related travel that is unrelated to the preparation of this manuscript. Citation for this article:

Dual-Purpose Bioreactors to Monitor Noninvasive Physical and Biochemical Markers of Kidney and Liver Scaffold Recellularization

“…Both kidney and liver bioreactors described here represent organ-specific refinements to improve recellularization and monitoring of cell growth and function based on the original cardiac perfusion model described by Langendorff 18,19 and later modified for the kidney 7,10,15,16 and liver 2,9,11,12,30 bioengineering. The modified kidney bioreactor design described here improves upon these models by incorporating both ureteral and arterial routes for recellularization allowing for a direct comparison, and we show improved recellularization using high-pressure arterial infusion compared to ureteral infusion of renal epithelial cells.…”

“…2 Bioreactor systems recapitulate the niche microenvironment leading to cell and tissue development; therefore, a high degree of attention to detail in bioreactor construction is crucial for successful long-term development of functional engineered tissues and organs.…”

Urinary bladder matrix promotes site appropriate tissue formation following right ventricle outflow tract repair

“…In recent efforts to preserve and mimic the natural biochemical and mechanical environment of organs requiring repair, organ-specific scaffolds have recently shown promise in a variety of tissue engineering applications, [21][22][23][24][25][26][27][28][29][30][31] including the heart.…”

Development and Characterization of Acellular Extracellular Matrix Scaffolds from Porcine Menisci for Use in Cartilage Tissue Engineering

“…54 With formic acid treatment for 2 h, the amount of DNA remained was 37.20 -6.53 ng/mg in the dry menisci tissue. According to an accepted criterion for acellularity (less than 50 ng/mg dry tissue weight), 55 formic acid-treated scaffold is considered as an acellular scaffold.…”