A TISSUE-ENGINEERED PLANT SCAFFOLD: BIOLOGICAL, MECHANICAL AND HISTOLOGICAL CHARACTERIZATION

AIASSA L; NIEVA E; CID MP; COMÍN R; SALVATIERRA NA

Congreso; XXIV CONGRESO ARGENTINO DE BIOINGENIERÍA Y XIII JORNADAS DE INGENIERÍA CLÍNICA; 2023

Despite significant improvements in the creation of tissue engineering scaffolds, The greatest challenge still isdeveloping an efficient way to deliver nutrients and oxygen. The lack of availability of organs and the high costs of obtainingthem have also led science to look for solutions of different origin. The similarities in the vascular structure of plant and animaltissues allowed us to think about the development of a decellularized plant tissue as a prevascularized scaffold for tissueengineering applications. We propose in this project to implement a methodology for obtaining acellular scaffolds from babyspinach leaves in order to provide different geometries of scaffolds with intact vascularization that can serve as a foundation forsubsequent recellularization with adult or embryonic animal and/or human cells. Results show that the decellularization protocolallowed to obtain a scaffold with a conserved structure, with minimal contents of nucleic acids, residual detergents and withoutevidence of cytotoxicity. In addition to this, the methodology developed for the decellularization of baby spinach leaves, proved tobe the most efficient way of obtaining a plant based three-dimensional architecture, which could be recellularized with animalcells or stem cells in a subsequent step