The project is part of the most recent trends in regenerative medicine (whose goal is to regenerate, replace, or repair damaged tissues or organs), such as the decellularization of animal and human hearts. This means the removal of immunogenic elements, such as cells and their components, while maintaining the native extracellular matrix unchanged in its composition and distribution, including the original vascular and nervous scaffold, necessary to guide subsequent recellularization.

However, the process is currently unstable, not easily repeatable, operator-dependent, and poorly controlled. In fact, there are no dedicated industrial tools that are easily modifiable for the decellularization of organs, including the heart, and the entire procedure is mostly performed manually.

The creation of a device capable of combining modularity, sterility, monitoring, and automatic control to perform decellularization, acting on various parameters such as temperature, pressure, and flows, would make the procedure accessible, standardized, and capable of allowing the regeneration of parts of the heart or the whole heart.

The project’s goal is to create a modular and automated platform that, starting from a heart or parts of it, allows the obtaining of a decellularized matrix with preserved intact the original biochemical composition and structure, as well as cellular bioactivity.

RESULTS

• Analysis and definition of the characteristics of the decellularization platform (definition of the procedure to be automated, choice of materials and biocompatibility evaluation, integration of enabling technologies and front end for the operator).
• Design of the device (technical definition of thermal management of fluids and organs, sensors, control software for the instrument and online monitoring of parameters acquired from sensors, hardware scheme definition).
• Realization of a modular prototype system for the decellularization of organs.
• Validation through tests and characterization of the extracellular matrix obtained with the different decellularization protocols.