A research team from Tohoku University and the University of Toronto has succeeded for the first time in the world in transplanting a hybrid bioartificial lung into mice, in which cells were removed from mouse lungs and human cells were cultured and colonized inside.
Transplantation using bioartificial organs can be said to be the ultimate method in organ transplantation medicine, which is subject to a chronic shortage of donors. Decellularization and recellularization methods are promising methods for creating bioartificial organs that can be transplanted. This involves completely removing animal cells from donor animal organs using drugs (decellularization), injecting cultured human cells into the remaining "mold" and performing perfusion culture to fix the cells (recellularization). , a technology that restores and regenerates organs.
This research group has successfully connected microscopic mouse lungs to a perfusion culture circuit through microsurgical surgery, and succeeded in developing a mouse lung organ regeneration platform. When the cells were completely removed from the mouse lungs, human-derived vascular endothelial cells were injected, and the organ was cultured, it was confirmed that a new pulmonary vascular network was regenerated in the mouse lungs.
Using a mathematical method called fractal analysis, they determined the optimal number of human vascular endothelial cells for mouse lung regeneration and found that 3000 million cells was optimal. Therefore, when they injected 3000 million human vascular endothelial cells into the decellularized mouse lungs and transplanted the regenerated lungs into the mice to restart blood flow, blood flow reached every corner of the lungs.
Toward clinical application of bioartificial lungs, we aim to conduct research in the future to regenerate pig lungs, which are comparable in size to human lungs, using human-derived cells. Previously, there was a lack of experimental platforms for transplanted organs, but through this research, we were able to establish an organ regeneration platform using small mouse lungs that allows experiments to be carried out using less than one-tenth the resources of rats or pigs. . This result is expected to greatly accelerate the development of bioartificial lungs.
Paper information:[Scientific Reports] Orthotopic transplantation of the bioengineered lung using amouse-scale perfusion-based bioreactor and human primary endothelial cells
