Development and evaluation of a novel combined perfusion decellularization heart‐lung model for tissue engineering of bioartificial heart‐lung scaffolds

Abstract

Combined heart-lung transplantation remains the only definitive treatment for end-stage pulmonary and cardiac disease. Nevertheless, the rates of this life-saving procedure have been constantly decreasing, mainly owing to the restrictive indications, such as severe pulmonary hypertension with right ventricular failure, congenital heart disease, idiopathic interstitial pneumonia, as well as the severe donor-organ shortage that transplant surgery is facing. The International Thoracic Organ Transplant Registry only reports 59 heart-lung transplantations performed in 2017 (1). Furthermore, the long-term complications and side effects of immunosuppressive therapy, including hypertension, diabetes mellitus, malignancy, and chronic allograft rejection remain a common concern (2). Tissue engineering represents a promising concept for organ and tissue replacement and may constitute a novel approach to

Extracorporeal membrane oxygenation from last resort to indispensable tool in the treatment of respiratory and/or circulatory failure

“…Heart-lungs organ blocks retrieved from the animals can be used to create an acellular scaffold with the preserved extracellular matrix and three-dimensional architecture to provide a bioartificial platform for combined heart and lung tissue engineering. 5 Physiologically relevant organ substitutes result from the merging of heterogeneous cell types with multifunctional materials to recapitulate native organ geometries, components, and functions. The production of biologically active scaffolds depends strongly on the optimization of a decellularization protocol.…”