Esophagus tissue engineering: in situ generation of rudimentary tubular vascularized esophageal conduit using the ovine model.

Purpose: Esophagus replacement using the present surgical techniques is associated with significant morbidity. Tissue engineering of the esophagus may provide the solution for esophageal loss. In our attempts to engineer the esophagus, this study aimed to investigate the feasibility of generating vascularized in situ esophageal conduits using the ovine model.

Fluorescence-activated cell sorting of PCK-26 antigen-positive cells enables selection of ovine esophageal epithelial cells with improved viability on scaffolds for esophagus tissue engineering.

Objective: For esophagus tissue engineering, isolation and proliferation of esophageal epithelial cells (EEC) is a pre-requisite for scaffold seeding to create constructs. The aim of this study was to sort EEC expressing cytokeratin markers and their proliferative subpopulations; also, to investigate the viability of differentiated EEC subpopulations on collagen scaffolds.

Methods: Ovine esophageal epithelial cells (OEECs) from sheep esophagus were analyzed using flow cytometry for pan cytokeratin (PCK-26) and proliferation cell nuclear antigen (PCNA).

Automatic retrieval of single microchimeric cells and verification of identity by on-chip multiplex PCR.

The analysis of rare cells is not an easy task. This is especially true when cells representing a fetal microchimerism are to be utilized for the purpose of non-invasive prenatal diagnosis because it is both imperative and difficult to avoid contaminating the minority of fetal cells with maternal ones. Under these conditions, even highly specific biochemical markers are not perfectly reliable.

Smooth muscle tissue engineering for hybrid tubular organs: scanning electron microscopic investigations of cell interactions with collagen scaffolds.

Tissue engineering of transplantable tubular tissue necessitates a composite approach to assembling the individual components. In the engineering of tubular structures (gastrointestinal, urogenital and vascular tissues) there is a demand for smooth muscle tissue in addition to the primary organ-specific tissue. This study aims to investigate the interaction of smooth muscle cells on bovine collagen scaffolds cross-linked with glutaraldehyde under in vitro conditions, using scanning electron microscopy.

Esophagus tissue engineering: hybrid approach with esophageal epithelium and unidirectional smooth muscle tissue component generation in vitro.

Purpose: The aim of this study was to engineer the two main components of the esophagus in vitro: (a) esophageal epithelium and (b) smooth muscle tissue. Furthermore, (a) survivability of esophageal epithelial cells (EEC) on basement membrane matrix (BMM)-coated scaffolds and (b) oriented smooth muscle tissue formation on unidirectional BMM-coated collagen scaffolds was investigated.

Methods: Both EEC and smooth muscle cells (SMC) were sourced from Sprague-Dawley rats.

A novel sandwich ELISA for alpha1 domain based detection of soluble HLA-G heavy chains.

The detection of soluble human leukocyte antigen G (HLA-G) has been a technically demanding task for several years now and various enzyme linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA) formats have been designed. However, no ELISA test has been described so far which is able to detect all possible kinds of soluble HLA-G (sHLA-G) molecules that might occur in bio fluids. Here we describe a new ELISA approach able to recognize soluble alpha1 domain containing heavy chains of all HLA-G isoforms.