Decellularized lucky bamboo scaffolds for cartilage tissue engineering

Cartilage is a load-bearing connective tissue with limited self-healing capacity and tissue engineering approaches aim to develop functional scaffolds for the repair and regeneration of damaged cartilage. Scaffold porosity and mechanical characteristics play important roles to support cell growth and provide tissue function. In most cases, however, they are inversely correlated. Therefore, manufacturing highly porous scaffolds with suitable mechanical properties is one of the major challenges in cartilage tissue engineering. In this study, lucky bamboo (<i>Dracaena sanderiana</i>) was chosen as a cartilage tissue engineering scaffold since it can provide high porosity (86 ± 10%), appropriate pore size (26 ± 8 µm) and desirable elastic modulus (0.9 ± 0.4 MPa) comparable with native articular cartilage (∼1 MPa). Chemical decellularization was accomplished using sodium dodecyl sulfate to remove the cellular content (-77%) without causing any significant damage to the cellulose structure of the lucky bamboo scaffolds. Decellularized scaffolds were seeded with primary bovine chondrocytes and cultured for up to 8 weeks. Effect on cell proliferation and extracellular matrix (ECM) accumulation were analyzed using biochemical, histological and immunohistochemical methods. A homogenous cell distribution throughout the decellularized scaffolds was observed and the presence of type Ⅱ collagen and aggrecan indicated that the seeded cells retained their chondrogenic phenotype during the culture period. In addition, cellularity and ECM accumulation within the scaffolds significantly increased with time in culture. Overall, these findings were very promising and support decellularized lucky bamboo as a potential scaffold material in cartilage tissue engineering applications.