CONICET | Buscador de Institutos y Recursos Humanos

Tissue engineering has had a great boom in the last decade. Thepossibility of generating bioartificial organs has been demonstratedwith the ultimate goal of solving lack of organs for transplantation.Here we present a bioartificial spleen project that will allow the evaluation of drugs, both, in their biological efficacy and in their immunogenic potential. Rat spleens (n=10) were decellularized with 1%SDS (2 ml/min) solution admistrated by the splenic artery for 18 h,then 0.1 % Triton X-100 for 18 h (2ml/min) was perfused to removeDNA, finally spleen were perfused with saline solution. Our decellulation protocol did not show any cellular components (H&E andDAPI) but preserved the extracellular matrix architecture. We alsoevaluate by fluorescence the presence of laminin and fibronectinin the matrix and did not found any difference with native spleen.Developing the vascular system before developing the rest of thetissue is critical in any bioartificial organ for these reason 2.107HUVEC cells were administered by the splenic artery and could bemaintained under culture conditions for 6 days with medium withgrowth factors for endothelial cells (1 ml/min). It was possible to observe both by H&E and by CD31/DAPI staining that viable cells arepresent at 6 days in the scaffold. Although the degree of coveragewas low, we believe that by increasing the number of cells seeded we could achieve a better result. Our next steps in this line ofwork, considering that the spleen is an organ of the immune systemitself, will be to evaluate recellularization with hematopoietic stemcells, peripheral blood mononuclear cells and isolated populations oflymphocytes and monocytes. The present study demonstrates thatspleen scaffold can be prepared successfully and can be use forendothelial cells culture.