BioSyM START Joint Seminar

Event Date: 21 Sep 2015 08:00 AM - 21 Sep 2015 09:00 AM

Event Venue: Perseverance Rooms 1 & 2, Level 5, Enterprise

Extra Cellumar Matrix Recellularization:

Restoring Function Towards The Native State

Dr.Udi Sarig, NTU, Singapore

Abstract: Functional tissue engineering (FTE) - a tissue engineering (TE) subfield – employs various cellularized biomaterial scaffolds for the “engineering of load bearing tissues”. To generate more biomimetic materials, various extracellular matrix (ECM) scaffolds were isolated through decellularization. However, decellularization represents a trade-off between excessive ECM damage and preservation of ECM ultrastructure and bioactivity. Indeed, vast research has identified biophysical effects of the ECM on cell survival, proliferation, migration, organization, differentiation and maturation, with clear implications for FTE. Surprisingly though, no study to date, to the best of our knowledge, provided clear methods and understanding on the reciprocal effectsof cellularization on the cellularized ECM scaffolds biophysical properties, under physiological-like conditions. We hypothesized that by re-cellularizing porcine cardiac ECM (pcECM, serving as a model scaffold) some of the original myocardial tissue biophysical properties can be restored, concerning scaffolds surface and bulk modifications consequent to cellularization. The results of a systematic biophysical assessment of pcECM scaffolds seeded with human mesenchymal stem cells, a common multipotent cell source in cardiac TE, will be presented and compared to cellular pcECM and native ventricular tissue serving as negative and positive controls, respectively. We report a new type of FTE in which cell interactions with a composite scaffold were evaluated from the perspective of their contribution to the construct surface (FTIR,WET-SEM) and bulk (DSC, TGA uni-and bi-axial mechanical testing) biophysical properties. Such an approach yields important methodologies, understanding and data serving both as a reference as well as a possible design criteria for future  studies in FTE.