Rapid Protocol of Porcine Kidney Decellularization

Abstract

Chronic kidney disease is a problem that has grown in recent decades worldwide. The National Kidney Foundation (NKF) estimates that the number of patients will double in the next 10 years. Dialysis and kidney transplantation are the treatments used for chronic kidney disease. There is hope in slowing down chronic kidney disease or even stopping its progression. Bioengineering and cell therapy are the main fields in kidney regeneration research using three-dimensional matrices in which cells are cultured, an ideal solution for scarcity organs for kidney transplantation. The difficulty in re-creating a functional kidney due to the complexity of its three-dimensional structure and its composition of different cell types and that can be incorporated in vivo with low immunogenicity is a very difficult task. Therefore, the aim of the present study was to meet the enormous demand for new treatments, developing strategies of tissue engineering on the basis of the decellularization of the porcine kidney performed through a new cell removal protocol. We determined the effective removal of cells by histologic and immunohistochemical analyses, showing the preservation of type IV collagen and fibronectin. Therefore, this method is a quick way to obtain decellularized porcine kidneys for future recellularization studies.