Effect of decellularization process on the mechanical properties of porcine coronary artery

Abstract

A functional tissue engineered blood vessel is one that has removed the major cellular immunogenic components, and preserves the remaining required mechanical properties of extracellular matrix. However, decellularization treatment tends to weaken the mechanical properties of the tissues, hence reducing the durability of the vascular graft. In this study, three different decellularization protocols, SDS, Triton X-100 and Trypsin, were performed on coronary arteries. The effectiveness of cell removal was tested using scanning electron microscope, and uniaxial tensile testing was used to examine the mechanical properties of the tissues after treatment. Results have shown that Trypsin treatment were not effective at removing cells and treated samples were significantly different from native tissues in terms mechanical properties due to disruption of collagen and elastin network. In comparison with different treatment time, it was found out that Trypsin treated samples tend to deteriorate with prolonged exposure time while SDS and Triton X-100 treated samples were not affected. Although SDS treated samples gave near complete cell removal, there was a significant drop in strength implying that the collagen network was denatured. Similar to SDS treated samples, Triton X-100 treated samples also gave near complete cell removal. However, the mechanical properties of Triton X-100 treated samples were not significantly different from untreated samples suggesting that Triton X-100 protocol was able to preserve the mechanical properties of the tissues. It was concluded that Triton X-100 is the most promising decellularization agent.