Preparation Of Transplantable Acellular Scleral Graft Using Porcine Eye

The scleral graft from human eye is useful tool that is widely used as a surgical materials for eye trauma, glaucoma, enucleation, and so on. However, due to the shortage of donor, the transplantable allograft human sclera can be lack of supply and expensive. Therefore, production of biocompatible decellularized sclera graft from porcine eye can be beneficial tools for ophthalmic surgery. The aim of our study is preparation of transplantable acellular sclera from porcine eye. After thawing of the freezed porcine eye, the sclera was separated and then argitated using 0.1% sodium dodecyl sulfate solution for 48 hours. After washing using cold distilled water for 1 day, it was sterilized with slightly acidic electrolyzed water. The decellularized graft had no evidence of remnant xenogenic cells but there was plenty of collagen matrix. We performed transplantation of the acellular graft onto the sclera of rabbit, as a result, we found that there was host vascular formation without any inflammation and rejection after 3 months of surgery. Although future clinical trials would be needed, tissue engineered sclera graft from porcine eye would be beneficial tools for the ophthalmic surgery. This work was supported by the Global Research and Development Center (GRDC) Program through the National Research Foundation of Korea (NRF) funded by the Ministry of Education, Science and Technology (2017K1A4A3014959) and NRF-2018R1D1A1B07050014. This work was also supported by the research grant of the Chungbuk National University in 2017.