Comparative Study of Two Decellularization Protocols on a Biomaterial for Tissue Engineering

Cardiovascular disease is a major health risk since past decade. Surgical treatment for major heart diseases has been one of the major challenges since years. Cardiac valves are synthetic or bio prosthetic ones. Mechanical valves are long durable but highly thrombogenic and undergo calcification at higher rates demanding permanent anticoagulation, which increases the risk of bleeding. Biomaterial scaffolds are used in surgical replacements but only after decellularization and processing. Decellularization makes tissue less antigenic; reduce inflammatory response and less tissue degeneration. In this work two decellularization protocols are tried on bovine pericardium (BP) to find out the effect of each of them on the scaffold's integrity. BP undergone protocol 1(0.25% Trypsin-EDTA, TritonX-100, Deoxycholic acid, Peracetic acid/Ethanol) treatment was seen to have highly distorted and damaged collagen matrix. Decellularization with protocol 2 (Deoxycholic acid, DNase, RNase, Ethanol) resulted in a completely decellularised bovine pericardium. The extracellular matrix was intact as native one with collagen bundles. This will help cell attachment to the decellularised matrix.