A Tissue‐Engineered Artificial Bile Duct Grown to Resemble The Native Bile Duct

The aim of this study was to fabricate an artificial bile duct for the development of a new treatment for biliary diseases. Eighteen hybrid pigs were implanted with a bile duct organoid unit (BDOU) made of a bioabsorbable polymer. Twelve of the transplanted BDOUs had been seeded with autologous bone marrow cells (BMCs) in advance. Six animals, the controls, were grafted with the scaffold alone with no BMCs seeded. The common bile duct was cut, the hepatic cut end of the native common bile duct was anastomosed to the BDOU and the other end was anastomosed to the duodenum. The controls underwent a similar operation. The neo‐bile duct was removed at pre‐determined time points and investigated histologically. All 18 recipient pigs survived until their sacrifice at 6 weeks, 10 weeks or 6 months. Histological examination revealed incomplete epithelialization of the neo‐bile duct at 6 weeks and 10 weeks after transplantation. At 6 months, the organoid exhibited a morphology almost identical to that of the native common bile duct. No differences were found between the controls and BMC‐seeded pigs. These results show that the artificial bile duct thus fabricated can serve as a substitute for the native bile duct.

[1]  M. El-Hamid,et al.  Use of single layer small intestinal submucosa for long segment ureteral replacement: a pilot study. , 2004, The Journal of urology.

[2]  M. Weiss,et al.  Isolation and Characterization of Mouse Hepatic Stem Cells in Vitro , 2003, Seminars in liver disease.

[3]  S. Ashley,et al.  Tissue-engineered small intestine: Ontogeny of the Immune System12 , 2001, Transplantation.

[4]  M. Rosen,et al.  Small intestinal submucosa as a bioscaffold for biliary tract regeneration. , 2002, Surgery.

[5]  H. Malhi,et al.  Isolation of human progenitor liver epithelial cells with extensive replication capacity and differentiation into mature hepatocytes. , 2002, Journal of cell science.

[6]  Axel Haverich,et al.  Tissue engineering of small diameter vascular grafts. , 2002, European journal of vascular and endovascular surgery : the official journal of the European Society for Vascular Surgery.

[7]  S. Ashley,et al.  Tissue-engineered small intestine: Ontogeny of the Immune System12 , 2001, Transplantation.

[8]  S. Uemoto,et al.  Biliary Anastomotic Complications in 400 Living Related Liver Transplantations , 2001, World Journal of Surgery.

[9]  N. Hibino,et al.  Tissue-engineered vascular autograft: inferior vena cava replacement in a dog model. , 2001, Tissue engineering.

[10]  H Imamura,et al.  Small-for-size grafts in living-related liver transplantation. , 2001, Journal of the American College of Surgeons.

[11]  Y. Imai,et al.  Transplantation of a tissue-engineered pulmonary artery. , 2001, The New England journal of medicine.

[12]  C. Vessey,et al.  HEPATIC STEM CELLS: A REVIEW , 2001, Pathology.

[13]  H. Beger,et al.  Biliary strictures complicating pancreaticoduodenectomy , 2000, International journal of pancreatology : official journal of the International Association of Pancreatology.

[14]  J. Vacanti,et al.  End-to-end anastomosis between tissue-engineered intestine and native small bowel. , 1999, Tissue engineering.

[15]  W. Mars,et al.  Bone marrow as a potential source of hepatic oval cells. , 1999, Science.

[16]  J. Chen,et al.  Experiment for a polyurethane replacement of the common bile duct. , 1998, Chinese medical journal.

[17]  Yasuko Tomizawa,et al.  Autocrine angiogenic vascular prosthesis with bone marrow transplantation , 1996, Nature Medicine.

[18]  Y. Nosé,et al.  The need to develop artificial bile ducts. , 1995, Artificial organs.

[19]  S. Thung,et al.  Liver stem cells and development. , 1993, Laboratory investigation; a journal of technical methods and pathology.

[20]  P. Carthew,et al.  Cytokeratin expression during AFB1-induced carcinogenesis. , 1990, Carcinogenesis.