Combinatorial Decellularization as a Better Approach to Porcine Liver Extracellular Matrix Scaffold Fabrication With Preserved Bioactivity: A Comparative Evaluation.

Soft tissue repair patches of decellularized extracellular matrices (ECM) with inherently preserved structural components and biomacromolecules are desirable in regenerative applications. This study characterizes three detergent-based decellularization methods to fabricate acellular porcine liver matrices to remove antigenic determinants without compromising the structural integrity, glycosaminoglycans (GAG) content, and bound growth factors within the resulting ECM. Three detergents chosen for decellularization were sodium dodecyl sulfate (SDS), SDS with sodium deoxycholate (SDS+SDC-combinatorial method), and triton X-100 followed by SDS. Combinatorial detergent decellularization effectively removed cellular components and retained intact collagenous structure with minimal residual DNA and protein. It also preserved significantly higher amounts of GAG, HGF, and bFGF. TX100 decellularization was highly destructive with the least preservation of GAG and GFs. The SDS method showed an intermediate level of preservation of biomolecules. The correlation obtained between GAG and GFs revealed quantification of GAG to be an indirect way of estimating the bound GFs preserved within the ECM. In vitro experiments revealed the non-cytotoxic nature of the scaffolds. The study revealed that, among the three methods of decellularization, the ECM scaffold fabricated by combinatorial detergent decellularization is extremely promising to be used as a soft tissue repair patch with inherent bioactive molecules for scaffold-based regenerative therapies.