The scaffolds prepared from the tissue decellularization conserve the porous 3-D structure and provide an optimal matrix for the tissue regeneration. Since decade, the enzymatic digestion, chemical reagent treatment and mechanical actions such as eversion and abrasion have been used to remove the cells from the intact matrix. In this study, we optimized an enzymatic method to decellularize the umbilical artery to construct a 3-D porous scaffold which is suitable for the culture of mesenchymal stem cells (MSCs). The scaffold maintained the interconnected porous structure. It remained the similar high water content 95.3±1% compared to 94.9±0.6% in the intact umbilical artery (p>0.05). The decellularization process decreased the stress from 0.24±0.05 mPa to 0.15±0.06 mPa (p<0.05). However the decellularization did not change the strain of the artery (45±15% vs. 53±10%, p>0.05). When the scaffold was transplanted to the subcutaneous tissue in the wild type mice, there were less T cells appeared in the surrounding tissue which meant the decreased the immunogenicity by decellularization. This scaffold also supported the adhesion and proliferation of the MSCs. In this study, we constructed a biological compatible porous scaffold from the decellularized umbilical artery which may provide a suitable scaffold for cell-matrix interaction studies and for tissue engineering.

Biomed Mater Eng., 2015