Evaluating the Effect of Tissue Selection on the Characteristics of Extracellular Matrix Hydrogels from Decellularized Porcine Bladders

Yu-Chuan Weng,Huynh-Quang-Dieu Nguyen,Yu-Han Hung,Chen-Yu Kao,Chun-Min Lo

doi:10.3390/app11135820

Abstract

Porcine urinary bladder is one of the most used organs to fabricate extracellular matrix (ECM) hydrogel. Although there are two different ECM types inside a bladder, i.e., urinary bladder matrix (UBM) and a subtype ECM (sECM), most studies have only employed UBM for hydrogel fabrication, and overlooked the potential use of sECM. In another aspect, the delamination of UBM from bladders is a time-consuming process; consequently, the use of the whole bladder (WB) will likely increase production yield. Therefore, the objective of this study was to fabricate hydrogels from sECM and WB and compare them to UBM. The results indicated that different layers of the bladder shared almost the same biochemical composition. In terms of gelation kinetics, rheology and morphology, although hydrogels from UBM and sECM exhibited some discrepancies, those from UBM and WB interestingly possessed almost the same characteristics. In in vitro studies, all the hydrogels possessed nearly the same biochemical effects towards L929 viability and C2C12 differentiation. These results could preliminarily indicate that the use of sECM should no longer be ignored, and WB could be a promising substitution for UBM hydrogels, eliminating the need for time-consuming delamination processes, as well as increasing the possibility of mass production.

Highlights

Hydrogels are defined as highly hydrated viscoelastic polymer materials with specific three-dimensional (3D) networks, which possess similar physical properties to natural tissue [1]
The decellularization method employed from our published protocol showed a good efficiency upon removing cellular materials of different layers of the bladders with less than 50 ng ds DNA per mg dried tissue (Supplementary Materials 1 Figure S1)
The results of the urinary bladder matrix (UBM) were consistent with our previous study [9] with respect to the collagen content (0.48 ± 0.07 compared to 0.49 ± 0.01) and the sGAG content (1.39 ± 0.28 compared to 1.5 ± 0.05, respectively)

Summary

Introduction

Hydrogels are defined as highly hydrated viscoelastic polymer materials with specific three-dimensional (3D) networks, which possess similar physical properties to natural tissue [1]. Hydrogels derived from decellularized tissues offer numerous advantages compared to synthetic hydrogels, as their extracellular matrix (ECM). The. ECM is composed of two biochemically and morphologically recognizable 3D structures, the basement membrane (BM) and the interstitial matrix (IM) [3]. ECM is composed of two biochemically and morphologically recognizable 3D structures, the basement membrane (BM) and the interstitial matrix (IM) [3] These entities can be investigated as two separate domains, they do not exist in isolation, and are instead interconnected by multiple anchoring and interconnecting fibrils [4]. The BM is a highly organized thin, dense sheet of the ECM, containing primarily collagen Compared to the dense morphology of BM, the interstitial matrix is a loosely organized porous “3D amorphous lattice” located next to the BM.

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Discussion

Conclusion