Polymeric scaffold recreates bladder tissue

(Nanowerk News) Researchers from Isfahan University of Technology in association with researchers from Sweden studied the application of polymeric scaffolds to recreate bladder tissue ("Constructs of electrospun PLGA, compressed collagen and minced urothelium for minimally manipulated autologous bladder tissue expansion").
The scaffolds have desirable mechanical and biological properties at the same time, and due to the existence of the bladder tissue at tiny scale instead of cell, they do not require cell extraction or culture.
The common method for recreation of bladder tissue is to use a part of the patient's intestine as the bladder. This method does not require drugs to weaken body immunity system. However, it is not appropriate for bladder tissue due to sorption ability of the internal wall of intestine because of the presence of toxic materials in urinate, and it causes serious problems. Therefore, it is essential to employ tissue engineering scaffolds.
Method presented in this research includes the application of grinded tissue of the internal wall of bladder. The lack of the need for cell extraction in laboratory reduces the cost but increases the rate of the preparation of the scaffold to be cultured in the body of the living creatures. To this end, a scaffold with hybrid structure has been made of collagen natural polymer and poly (lactic-co-glycolic acid) (PLGA) artificial polymer to prepare an appropriate media for cellular culture and to obtain desirable mechanical properties, respectively.
According to Fatemeh Ajal Loo'iyan, one of the researchers, the culturing of cells obtained from the internal and external walls is used in the surfaces of the polymeric scaffold in usual methods for bladder tissue engineering. In these methods, extraction process and cell culturing and proliferation are very expensive and time-consuming no matter what type of scaffold is used or what probable structural or biomechanical problems may occur. In addition, the patient should be operated twice.
Source: INIC