In vivo study of the biocompatibility of a novel compressed collagen hydrogel scaffold for artificial corneas

Abstract

The experiments were designed to evaluate the biocompatibility of a plastically compressed collagen scaffold (PCCS). The ultrastructure of the PCCS was observed via scanning electron microscopy. Twenty New Zealand white rabbits were randomly divided into experimental and control groups that received corneal pocket transplantation with PCCS and an amniotic membrane, respectively. And the contralateral eye of the implanted rabbit served as the normal group. On the 1st, 7th, 14th, 21st, 30th, 60th, 90th, and 120th postoperative day, the eyes were observed via a slit lamp. On the 120th postoperative day, the rabbit eyes were enucleated to examine the tissue compatibility of the implanted stroma. The PCCS was white and translucent. The scanning electron microscopy results showed that fibers within the PCCS were densely packed and evenly arranged. No edema, inflammation, or neovascularization was observed on ocular surface under a slit lamp and few lymphocytes were observed in the stroma of rabbit cornea after histological study. In conclusion, the PCCS has extremely high biocompatibility and is a promising corneal scaffold for an artificial cornea.

Composite core-and-skirt collagen hydrogels with differential degradation for corneal therapeutic applications

“…By contrast, collagen fibers of the skirt were more homogeneous in diameter, partially aligned and more densely packed. After three months, despite absence of clear collagen fibril structure, the skirt exhibited an ultrafine structure that more closely mimicked the native corneal stroma, in accordance with earlier studies detailing the microstructure of compressed collagen [16,44]. While the specific mechanisms of collagen transformation after implantation require further investigation, the high degree of corneal transparency observed post implantation and during skirt degradation is promising.…”

Tissue-engineered cornea constructed with compressed collagen and laser-perforated electrospun mat

“…Grafting allogenic corneal tissue is one of the primary therapies for serious diseases of the cornea because of its accessibility and immune privilege. However, there is a severe shortage of donor corneal tissue 3–5 and many potential donor corneas are rejected because they do not meet standards 6 ; thus, many researchers have attempted to fabricate corneal equivalents to replace pathologic corneal tissue 6, 7 . One method is to use human amniotic membrane (HAM), which is extensively used for the construction of damaged ocular surfaces and has been considered a gold standard scaffold for epithelial cell expansion 8–10 .…”

Low oxygen tension and macromolecular crowding accelerate extracellular matrix deposition in human corneal fibroblast culture

“…Although amniotic membranes have been used effectively in clinical setting (Nishida K ; Muqit MM and Ellingham RB and Daniel C ; Nubile M and Dua HS and Lanzini TE‐M and Carpineto P and Ciancaglini M and Toto L and Mastropasqua L ), several drawbacks, such as infections, batch‐to‐batch variations, lack of standardisation, calcification, granulomatous reaction and early detachment after transplantation, have limited their use (Dua HS and Maharajan VS and Hopkinson A ; Rahman I and Said DG and Maharajan VS and Dua HS ; Malhotra C and Jain A ). To this end, natural (Alaminos M and Sánchez‐Quevedo MDC and Muñoz‐Ávila JI and Serrano D and Medialdea S and Carreras I and Campos A ; Liu W and Merrett K and Griffith M and Fagerholm P and Dravida S and Heyne B and Scaiano JC and Watsky MA and Shinozaki N and Lagali N and Munger R and Li F ; Lawrence BD and Marchant JK and Pindrus MA and Omenetto FG and Kaplan DL ; Calderón‐Colón X and Xia Z and Breidenich J and Mulreany D and Guo Q and Uy O and Tiffany J and Freund D and McCally R and Schein O and Elisseeff J and Trexler M ; Espandar L and Bunnell B and Wang GY and Gregory P and McBride C and Moshirfar M ; Koh L and Islam M and Mitra D and Noel C and Merrett K and Odorcic S and Fagerholm P and Jackson W and Liedberg B and Phopase J and Griffith M ; Gouveia RM and Jones RR and Hamley IW and Connon CJ ; Xiao X and Pan S and Liu X and Zhu X and Connon CJ and Wu J and Mi S ) and synthetic (Wathier M and Johnson C and Kim T and Grinstaff M ; Degoricija L and Johnson C and Wathier M and Kim T and Grinstaff M ; Grinstaff M ; Garagorri N and Fermanian S and Thibault R and Ambrose WM and Schein OD and Chakravarti S and Elisseeff J ; Berdahl J and Johnson C and Proia A and Grinstaff M and Kim T ; Hartmann L and Watanabe K and Zheng L and Kim C and Beck S and Huie P and Noolandi J and Cochran J and Ta C and Frank C ; Deshpande P and Ramachandran C and Sangwan V and Macneil S ; Wu JW and Du Y and Mann MM and Yang E and Funderburgh JL and Wagner WR ) biomaterials, loaded with appropriate biological / therapeutic molecules and / or cell populations, have extensively used with promising results to‐date with respect to cell growth, mechanical stability and optical transparency. However, issues associated with inflammation, foreign body response, immune response and rejections (Vijayasekaran S and Fitton JH and Hicks CR and Chirila TV and Crawford GJ and Constable IJ ; Liu L and Kuffová L and Griffith M and Dang Z and Muckersie E and Liu Y and McLaughlin CR and Forrester JV ; Choi H and Kim M and Lee H and Jeong S and Kang H and Park C and Park C and Joon Kim S and Wee W ), have triggered investigation into in vitro organogenesis approaches.…”