Construction of the recellularized corneal stroma using porous acellular corneal scaffold

Abstract Acellular porcine cornea stroma (APCS) prepared using pancreatic phospholipase A 2 was proven to be promising corneal scaffold. However, its dense ultrastructure provides insufficient space that prevents the seeded cells from organizing into a functional tissue. In this report, freezing dry APCS (FD-APCS) biomaterials containing pores with different sizes were fabricated at different pre-freezing temperatures of −10, −80 or −198 °C, and the percentage of large pores (equivalent circle diameter ≥ 10 μm) was 93.55%, 69.36%, 35.79%, while the small pores ( in vitro , and maximal cell proliferation was observed in the −10 °C FD-APCS. The light transmittance of the FD-APCS-transplanted cornea after interlamellar keratoplasty in rabbit eyes displayed no significant difference from the APCS-transplanted or native cornea. This study indicated that the porous FD-APCS prepared using pancreatic phospholipase A 2 is capable of serving as potential scaffold for constructing tissue-engineered cornea with biological properties.