A Comparative Study of Rat Lung Decellularization by Chemical Detergents for Lung Tissue Engineering

Lung disease is the most common cause of death in the world. The last stage of pulmonary diseases is lung transplantation. Limitation and shortage of donor organs cause to appear tissue engineering field. Decellularization is a hope for producing intact ECM in the development of engineered organs.

The goal of the decellularization process is to remove cellular and nuclear material while retaining lung three-dimensional and molecular proteins. Different concentration of detergents was used for finding the best approach in lung decellularization.

In this study, three-time approaches (24, 48 and 96 h) with four detergents (CHAPS, SDS, SDC and Triton X-100) were used for decellularizing rat lungs for maintaining of three-dimensional lung architecture and ECM protein composition which have significant roles in differentiation and migration of stem cells. This comparative study determined that variable decellularization approaches can cause significantly different effects on decellularized lungs.

Results showed that destruction was increased with increasing the detergent concentration. Single detergent showed a significant reduction in maintaining of three-dimensional of lung and ECM proteins (Collagen and Elastin). But, the best methods were mixed detergents of SDC and CHAPS in low concentration in 48 and 96 h decellularization.

Decellularized lung tissue can be used in the laboratory to study various aspects of pulmonary biology and physiology and also, these results can be used in the continued improvement of engineered lung tissue.