Decellularized adipose tissue solid foams for hDPSC differentiation to osteogenic and adipogenic cells in 3D culture

Human Dental Pulp Stem Cells (hDPSCs) constitute one very interesting stem cell source for tissue engineering and regeneration, owing to their high multi-lineage differentiation ability, the absence of ethical issues as they are considered a biological waste from dental clinics, their high immune-tolerance upon in vivo transplantation, and their ample possibilities of implementation in personalized medicine and autologous tissue engineering therapies. Natural extracellular matrix (ECM)-based materials constitute very promising scaffolds for in vitro cell culture, enhancing the attachment and differentiation of cells as well as mimicking the in vivo environment more accurately. Among others, adipose tissue represents a potentially abundant source of human and animal origin ECM which can be easily obtained in large quantities by liposuction surgery. The combination of hDPSCs with decellularized adipose ECM-derived materials offers great possibilities for the development of novel 3D culture platforms for the tailored (re)generation of diverse tissues like bone and adipose tissue. In this chapter, we describe different 3D culture methodologies of hDPSCs on biologic scaffold materials composed of decellularized porcine and human adipose tissue. These 3D culture systems offer a much preferable alternative to traditional tissue culture treated cell culture plates in 2D and/or single protein composed biomaterials because, by better preserving the bioinductive signals that participate in the interaction between the cells and the extracellular matrix in native tissues, they reproduce a much closer situation to in vivo conditions.

Manuscript with Figures_Book Chapter.pdf