Abstract
Corneal transplantation by full‐thickness penetrating keratoplasty with human donor tissue is a widely accepted treatment for damaged or diseased corneas. Although corneal transplantation has a high success rate, a shortage of high‐quality donor tissue is a considerable limitation. Therefore, bioengineered corneas could be an effective solution for this limitation, and a decellularized extracellular matrix comprises a promising scaffold for their fabrication. In this study, three‐dimensional bioprinted decellularized collagen sheets were implanted into the stromal layer of the cornea of five rabbits. We performed in vivo noninvasive monitoring of the rabbit corneas using swept‐source optical coherence tomography (OCT) after implanting the collagen sheets. Anterior segment OCT images and averaged amplitude‐scans were acquired biweekly to monitor corneal thickness after implantation for 1 month. The averaged cornea thickness in the control images was 430.3 ± 5.9 μm, while the averaged thickness after corneal implantation was 598.5 ± 11.8 μm and 564.5 ± 12.5 μm at 2 and 4 weeks, respectively. The corneal thickness reduction of 34 μm confirmed the biocompatibility through the image analysis of the depth‐intensity profile base. Moreover, hematoxylin and eosin staining supported the biocompatibility evaluation of the bioprinted decellularized collagen sheet implantation. Hence, the developed bioprinted decellularized collagen sheets could become an alternative solution to human corneal donor tissue, and the proposed image analysis procedure could be beneficial to confirm the success of the surgery.
Highlights
The cornea is a transparent nonvascular tissue located in the outermost layer of the eye and plays a significant role in the visual function by refracting and transmitting light [1]
We further evaluated the morphological changes in the 3DBDCS-implanted corneal region quantitatively to confirm the biocompatibility of the 3D bioprinted decellularized collagen sheet (3D-BDCS) with the rabbits' corneas
We performed noninvasive monitoring of bioengineered cornea in rabbit corneas in vivo using swept-source optical coherence tomography (OCT) (SS-OCT), where the main objective of the study was to confirm the biocompatibility by evaluating the corneal thickness and morphological change in the monitored region
Summary
The cornea is a transparent nonvascular tissue located in the outermost layer of the eye and plays a significant role in the visual function by refracting and transmitting light [1]. Corneal transplantation has been performed for over 100 years, there are some critical problems to this procedure, including graft rejection, graft failure and a lack of donors [3,4,5]. To solve these problems, the implantation of an artificial cornea, known as a keratoprosthesis, has been introduced and is widely performed [6,7,8,9,10,11]. From a clinical perspective, bioengineered corneal substitutes using biocompatible materials are needed to overcome the shortcomings of corneal allografts
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