Toward human uterus tissue engineering: Uterine decellularization in a non-human primate species.

Introduction: Uterus bioengineering offers a potential treatment option for women with uterine factor infertility and for mitigating the risk of uterine rupture associated with women with defective uterine tissue. Decellularized uterine tissue scaffolds proved promising in further in vivo experiments in rodent and domestic species animal models. Variations in the extracellular matrix composition among different species and adaptations of the decellularization protocols make it difficult to compare the results between studies.

Transplantation of a bioengineered tissue patch promotes uterine repair in the sheep.

Innovative bioengineering strategies utilizing extracellular matrix (ECM) based scaffolds derived from decellularized tissue offer new prospects for restoring damaged uterine tissue. Despite successful fertility restoration in small animal models, the translation to larger and more clinically relevant models have not yet been assessed. Thus, our study investigated the feasibility to use a 6 cm graft constructed from decellularized sheep uterine tissue, mimicking a future application to repair a uterine defect in women.

Mesenchymal stem cells establish a pro-regenerative immune milieu after decellularized rat uterus tissue transplantation.

Decellularized tissue is generally considered immune privileged after transplantation and is an attractive scaffold type for tissue regeneration, including applications for infertility treatment. However, the immune response following transplantation of decellularized tissue is insufficiently studied, in particular after they have been recellularized with mesenchymal stem cells (MSCs). Therefore, we replaced a large uterus segment with a bioengineered graft developed from decellularized uterus tissue and analyzed the immune response during the first 4 months in acellular or MSCs-recellularized scaffolds in the rat.