Produção de matrizes biológicas a partir de valvas cardíacas de suínos e recelularização com células tronco da polpa dentária humana

Abstract

Heart is a vital organ that pumps blood allowing its circulation through the body. The aortic valve and their ventricular support structures form the centerpiece of the heart. All chambers of the heart are directly related to the valve, and its leaflets are directly incorporated into the heart skeleton. Amongst heart valves diseases, failures in the aortic leaflets are the most common ones, leading to negative impacts on patients’ life, as well as increases on the costs for health systems worldwide. For regenerative medicine and tissue engineering, the development of materials capable of effectively replace damaged aortic valve tissue is of great interest. The mechanical and biological valves have been widely studied, but several issues related to integration to the host have not yet been resolved. Promising decellularization protocols for tissue heart valve have been investigated as an alternative for the preparation of replacement material and to serve as a substrate for matrix repopulation. However, some of the decellularization protocols used today have some limitations, since until now there is still no method which can achieve a complete decellularization while maintaining the structure of extracellular matrix for later repopulation, avoiding rejection after implantation and future replacement of the prosthesis. Thus, the present work aims at obtaining a biological matrix that satisfies such requirements through the decellularization of pigs aortic leaflets and its repopulation with stem cells isolated from human dental pulp. So far, we tested three decellularization protocols. The protocols using trypsin were shown reproducible and yielded a smaller amount of DNA, when compared to the protocol where only detergent was employed, which was also not reproducible. About the stem cells, they can be isolated from human deciduous teeth (SHEDs), with studies indicating its importance in regenerative medicine aimed at the reconstruction of aortic leaflets. In this work, SHEDs were obtained and phenotypically characterized, being positive for mesenchymal and embryonic markers and negative for hematopoietic markers, in addition to presenting in vitro osteogenic differentiation potential. The SHEDs were then cultured in Petri plates with the decellularized matrices, however there was no success in the matrix repopulation. In an attempt to overcome such problem, a bioreactor was built in order to increase the tissue repopulation efficiency, however the results are being tested. Several points still need to be addressed in order to overcome the obstacles of tissue decellularization technique and then achieve a successful recellularization.