'Tissue Paper' Made from Organs to Aid Wound Healing
Northwestern University engineers have created 'tissue papers' made from blended animal organs that are thin and flexible enough to be folded into origami structures. These biomaterials could potentially be used to support natural hormone production in young cancer patients and aid wound healing. Individual types of tissue papers were made from ovarian, uterine, kidney, liver, muscle, or heart proteins obtained by processing pig and cow organs. Each tissue paper had specific cellular properties of the organ from which it was made. For wound healing, the researchers believe the tissue paper could provide support and the cell signaling needed to help regenerate tissue to prevent scarring and accelerate healing. As for hormone production, the tissue paper made from a bovine ovary was used to grow ovarian follicles when they were cultured in vitro. The follicles (eggs and hormone-producing cells) grown on the tissue paper produced hormones necessary for proper function and maturation.
Transcript
00:00:15 So we've created a material we call tissue papers that's very thin like phyllo dough made up of biological tissues and organs. We can switch out the tissue that we use to make the tissue paper, so whether that be derived from liver, or muscle or even ovary, we can switch it out very easily and make a paper out of any tissue or organ. A lot of people don't want to buy kidneys, livers or hearts to eat, so what the butchers do is just put them in bins in the corner for very cheap. And that's where we go and we collect our five, 10 hearts or four or five livers and kidneys. And that's what we're use for the "de-cell" (decellularization) process and make tissue papers.
00:01:08 So what this is showing is this heart piece here has been de-celled one day, two day, three day, four day and five day. And you see it becomes clear. This is a cow ovary. So it's about the same size as a human ovary. After you take out all the cells in the water, this is what ovaries are like and it's really what all our issues and organs would be like. So we take our decellularized tissue or organ and we grind it into a fine powder. And it's that powder which we use to make the tissue papers. Because it has components that are found in natural tissues and organs, the cells will recognize it once it's implanted. What I've learned working here at
00:01:42 Northwestern a lot, especially in conjunction with Feinberg, working with other surgeons, is that they care about how materials feel and handle. So as I was picking this up, I was like, "I like how this feels, it handles nice, it's made of bioactive materials. There could be something here." Ultimately we'd want to create some type of patch or a very sophisticated Band-Aid in order to regenerate damaged parts. The follicles cells, or the ovarian cells, grew very well on it and they were able to produce estrogen and so we think using this material in combination with their ovarian cells could restore estrogen function. It really expands what we can do when it comes to creating synthetic environments or synthetic
00:02:34 materials for tissue engineering applications.