Rabbit thyroid extracellular matrix as a 3D bioscaffold for thyroid bioengineering

Abstract

Advances in regenerative medicine technologies have been strongly proposed in the management of thyroid diseases. Mechanistically, the adoption of thyroid bioengineering requires a scaffold that shares a similar three dimensional (3D) space structure, biomechanical properties, protein component, and cytokines to the native extracellular matrix (ECM). Herein, we prepared the 3D thyroid scaffold from the decellularization rabbit thyroid. Notably, through the imaging studies, it was distinctly evident that our protocol intervention minimized cellular materials and maintained the 3D spatial structure, biomechanical properties, ECM composition, and biologic cytokine. Consequently, the decellularization scaffold was seeded with human thyroid follicular cells, thus strongly revealing its potential in reinforcing cell adhesion, proliferation, and preserve important protein expression. Therefore, these findings revealed that the adoption of our protocol to generate a decellularized thyroid scaffold can potentially be utilized in transplantation to manage thyroid diseases through thyroid bioengineering.