Novel pre-vascularized tissue-engineered dermis based on stem cell sheet technique used for dermis-defect healing

Insufficient donor dermis and the shortage of three-dimensional vascular networks are the main limitations in the tissue-engineered dermis (TED). To solve these problems, we initially constructed pre-vascularized bone marrow mesenchymal stem cell sheet (PBMCS) and pre-vascularized fibroblasts cell sheet (PFCS) by cell sheet technology, and then superimposed or folded them together to construct a pre-vascularized TED (PTED), aiming to mimic the real dermis structure. The constructed PTED was implanted in nude mice dorsal dermis-defect wound and the wound-healing effect was quantified at Days 1, 7 and 14 via the methods of histochemistry and immunohistochemistry. The results showed that PTED could rapidly promote the wound closure, especially at Day 14, and the wound-healing rate of three-layer PTED could reach 97.2% (P < 0.01), which was faster than the blank control group (89.1%), PBMCS (92.4%), PFCS (93.8%) and six-layer PTED (92.3%). In addition, the vessel density in the PTED group was higher than the other groups on the 14th day. Taken together, it is proved that the PTED, especially three-layer PTED, is more conducive to the full-thickness dermis-defect repair and the construction of the three-dimensional vascular networks, indicating its potential application in dermis-defect repair.