Tissue Engineering. Part C, Methods

Wound healing is a complex and dynamic process that comprises of a series of molecular and cellular events that occur after tissue injury. The injuries of the maxillofacial and oral region caused by trauma or surgery result in undesirable wound healing such as delayed wound closure and formation of scar tissue. Skin tissue engineering/regeneration is an emerging approach towards faster, superior, and more effective resolution of clinically significant wounds effectively. A multitude of tissue engineering principles approaches are being put to action for the fabrication of hydrogels, electrospun sheets, 3D scaffolds, and thin films that can be used as wound dressings materials, sutures, or skin substitutes...

Bioactive glasses (BAGs) are surface-active ceramic materials that can be used in bone regeneration due to their known osteoconductive and osteoinductive properties. This systematic review aimed to study the clinical and radiographic outcomes of using BAGs in periodontal regeneration. The selected studies were collected from PubMed and Web of Science databases, and included clinical studies investigating the use of BAGs on periodontal bone defect augmentation between January 2000 and February 2022. The identified studies were screened using Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analysis (PRISMA) guidelines...

No abstract text is available yet for this article.

Isolated individual myofibers are valuable experimental models that can be used in various conditions to understand skeletal muscle physiology and pathophysiology at the tissue and cellular level. This report details a time- and cost-effective method for isolation of single myofibers from the flexor digitorum brevis (FDB) muscle in both young and aged mice. The FDB muscle was chosen for its documented history in single myofiber experiments. By modifying published methods for FDB myofiber isolation, we have optimized the protocol by first separating FDB muscle into individual bundles before the digestion, followed by optimizing the subsequent digestion medium conditions to ensure reproducibility...

Implant-supported dental prosthetics are widely used in dental practice. Sufficient peri-implant bone tissue is a crucial prerequisite for the long-term success of this treatment, as insufficient peri-implant bone volume hampers dental implant installation and negatively influences dental implant stability. However, due to tooth extraction, bone metabolism diseases, and trauma, bone defects in the jaw are common in patients, particularly in the elderly and those suffering from underlying conditions. If this is the case, alveolar ridge has to be augmented for reliable implant placement...

Stromal vascular fraction (SVF) is the primary isolate obtained after enzymatic digestion of adipose tissue that contains various cell types. Its successful application for cell-based construct preparation in an intra-operative setting for clinical bone augmentation and regeneration has been previously reported. However, the performance of SVF-based constructs compared to traditional ex vivo expanded adipose tissue-derived mesenchymal stromal cells (ATMSCs) remains unclear and direct comparative analyses are scarce...

In the peripheral nervous system, Schwann cells (SCs) play a crucial role in axonal growth, metabolic support of neurons, and the production of myelin sheaths. Expansion of SCs after extraction from human or animal nerves is a long and often low-yielding process. We established a rapid cell culture method using a defined serum-free medium to differentiate human induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs) into SCs in only 21 days. The SC identity was characterized by expression of SRY-Box Transcription factor 10 (SOX10), S100b, glial fibrillary acidic protein (GFAP), P75, growth-associated protein 43 (GAP43), and early growth response 2 (EGR2) markers...

AdipoRon is an adiponectin receptor 1, 2 (ADIPOR1 and ADIPOR2) agonist with numerous reported physiologic benefits in murine models of human disease, including a proposed reduction in fibrosis. However, AdipoRon has never been investigated in rabbits, which provide a robust model for orthopedic conditions. We examined the safety of intravenous (IV) AdipoRon in New Zealand White (NZW) female rabbits surgically-stressed by a procedure that mimics human arthrofibrosis. Fifteen female NZW rabbits were prospectively studied using increasing AdipoRon doses based on established literature...

Purpose: There is still a lack of effective treatments for cartilage damage. Cartilage tissue engineering could be a promising treatment method. Human umbilical cord Wharton's jelly (HUCWJ) and hydrogels have received wide attention as a scaffold for tissue engineering. They have not been widely used in clinical studies as their effectiveness and safety are still controversial. This study systematically compared the ability of these two biological tissue engineering materials to carry chondrocytes to repair cartilage injury in vivo ...

Islet transplantation is a useful therapeutic choice for severe diabetes mellitus; however, limited donor supplies have interfered with the use of this treatment. Therefore, the establishment of alternative donor sources and engineered tissue which enables to produce appropriate insulin for controlling blood glucose is an important challenge. The adult pig is a promising and feasible donor source and materials for the engineered tissue for the clinical setting among various candidates. The recent progress of gene-editing technology contributes to possible clinical porcine xenotransplantation, including porcine islet xenotransplantation...

Chronic kidney disease (CKD) is the irreversible loss of nephron function, leading to a build-up of toxins, prolonged inflammation, and ultimately fibrosis. Currently, no effective therapies exist to treat CKD due to its complex pathophysiology. Mesenchymal stem/stromal cell (MSC) transplantation is a promising strategy to treat kidney diseases, and multiple clinical trials are currently ongoing. We previously demonstrated that rat bone marrow-derived MSC (BMSC) sheets transplanted onto surgically decapsulated kidney exert therapeutic effects that suppressed renal fibrosis progression based on enhanced vascularization...

The respiratory tract is one of the frontline barriers for biological defense. Lung epithelial intercellular adhesions provide protection from bacterial and viral infections, and prevent invasion into deep tissues by pathogens. Dysfunction of lung epithelial intercellular adhesion caused by pathogens is associated with development of several diseases, such as acute respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS), pneumonia, and asthma. To elucidate the pathological mechanism of respiratory infections, two-dimensional cell cultures and animal models are commonly used, though are not useful for evaluating host specificity or human biological response...

Local tumor treatment is a feasible measure for patients with glioblastoma (GBM) who are unsuitable for surgical resection. Interferon-elastin-like polypeptide (IFN-ELP(V)) is a slow-release, biodegradable, thermosensitive fusion protein with antitumor immunity, and resveratrol (Res) is a polyphenolic compound with an antitumor effect. In this study, we found that intratumor injection of IFN-ELP(V) combined with intraperitoneal injection of Res is more effective in delaying GBM growth in mice. Specifically, in an orthotopic GBM model, we found a significant improvement in the median survival with this strategy...

Engineering clinically relevant musculoskeletal tissues at a human scale is a considerable challenge. Developmentally inspired scaffold-free approaches for engineering cartilage tissues have shown great promise in recent years, enabling the generation of highly biomimetic tissues. Despite the relative success of these approaches, the absence of a supporting scaffold or hydrogel creates challenges in the development of large-scale tissues. Combining numerous scaled-down tissue units (herein termed microtissues) into a larger macrotissue represents a promising strategy to address this challenge...

The advent of single-cell RNA sequencing (scRNA-Seq) has brought with it the ability to gain greater insights into the cellular composition of tissues and heterogeneity in gene expression within specific cell types. For tissue engineered blood vessels, this is particularly impactful to better understand how neotissue forms and remodels into tissue resembling a native vessel. A notable challenge, however, is the ability to separate cells from synthetic biomaterials to generate high quality single-cell suspensions to interrogate the cellular composition of our tissue engineered vascular grafts during active remodeling in situ...

Three-dimensional (3D) bioprinting demonstrates technology capable of producing structures comparable to native tissues in the human body. The Freeform Reversible Embedding of Suspended Hydrogels (FRESH) technique involves hydrogel-based bio-inks printed within a thermo-reversible support bath to provide mechanical strength to the printed construct. Smaller and more uniform microsphere sizes of FRESH were reported to aid in enhancing printing resolution and construct accuracy. Therefore, we sought to optimize the FRESH generation protocol, particularly by varying stir speed and stir duration, in hopes to further improve microsphere size and uniformity...

Primary human hepatocytes isolated from surgically resected liver tissue are an essential resource for pharmaceutical and toxicological studies. Patients undergoing partial liver resections have often received preoperative chemotherapy. The aim of our study was to investigate whether preoperative chemotherapy has effects on the outcome of cell isolation or the metabolic function of cultured hepatocytes. Liver specimens from 48 patients were used for hepatocyte isolation. Out of these, 21 patients had prior chemotherapy, with fluoropyrimidine-based regimen in 14 patients...

Mesenchymal stem cells (MSC) stimulate nerve and tissue regeneration and are primed for clinical translation. Application of autologous MSCs is limited by requirements for expedient harvesting procedures, proliferative expansion to increase cell numbers, and reduced regenerative potential due to aging or pathological conditions. Because MSCs are immune-privileged, allogeneic MSCs may serve as "off-the-shelf" cell-based reconstructive treatments to support nerve repair. Therefore, we examined the safety and immune response parameters of allogeneic MSCs seeded on NeuraGen® Nerve Guides (NNG) in a rabbit model...

No abstract text is available yet for this article.

In native articular cartilage, chondrocytes are completely capsulated by a pericellular matrix (PCM), together called the chondron. Due to its unique properties (w.r.t. territorial matrix) and importance in mechanotransduction, the PCM and chondron may be important in regenerative strategies. The current gold standard for the isolation of chondrons from cartilage dates from 1997. Although previous research already showed the low cell yield and the heterogeneity of the isolated populations, their compositions and properties have never been thoroughly characterized...