TY - JOUR T1 - Decellularised Human Liver is too Heterogeneous for Designing a Generic ECM-mimic Hepatic Scaffold JF - bioRxiv DO - 10.1101/073270 SP - 073270 AU - Giorgio Mattei AU - Chiara Magliaro AU - Andrea Pirone AU - Arti Ahluwalia Y1 - 2016/01/01 UR - http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2016/09/04/073270.abstract N2 - Decellularised human livers are considered the perfect ECM (extracellular matrix) surrogate because both 3-dimensional architecture and biological features of the hepatic microenvironment are thought to be preserved. However, donor human livers are in chronically short supply, both for transplantation or as decellularised scaffolds, and will become even scarcer as life expectancy increases. It is hence of interest to determine the structural and biochemical properties of human hepatic ECM to derive design criteria for engineering bio-mimetic scaffolds. The intention of this work was to obtain quantitative design specifications for fabricating scaffolds for hepatic tissue engineering using human livers as a template. To this end, hepatic samples from 5 human donors were decellularised using a protocol shown to reproducibly conserve matrix composition and micro-structure in porcine livers. The decellularisation outcome was evaluated through histological and quantitative image analyses to evaluate cell removal, protein and glycosaminoglycan content per unit area. Applying the same decellularisation protocol to human liver samples obtained from 5 different donors yielded 5 different outcomes. Only 1 liver out of 5 was completely decellularised, while the other 4 showed different levels of remaining cells. Moreover, protein and glycosaminoglycan content per unit area after decellularisation were also found to be donor-dependent. The donor-to-donor variability of human livers thus precludes their use as templates for engineering a generic 'one-size fits all' ECM-mimic hepatic scaffold. ER -