Abstract
Some pediatric tracheal pathologies remain therapeutic dead ends for which current palliative strategies are fraught with serious complications. With the aim of a tracheal replacement, our team has previously developed and patented a clinical grade partially decellularized trachea (PDT) from porcine tracheas. The aim of this work was to study and compare the biointegration mechanisms of this PDT in vivo, in a pig cervical muscle, with or without immunosuppressant. The secondary objective was to evaluate the optimal maturation time of the PDT in this heterotopic position. In total, 11 female Large White/Landrace pigs, weighing between 50 and 70 kg were included in this study. The mean age of the animals at the implantation was 4.8 months. The PDTs were implanted in a cervical muscle of pigs for either 28 days, with or without cyclosporin A treatment, or for 56 days without immunosuppression. Histological evaluation showed very good PDT biointegration, characterized by neovascularization and fibroblast colonization, and no detectabale infection. Additionally, tissue and blood analyses showed no signs of graft rejection or surrounding tissue necrosis. Immunosuppression did not show any superiority in terms of biointegration after 28 days of treatment. After 56 days of implantation, a more significant degradation of the cartilage. Therefore, the optimal condition for PDT maturation proved to be 28 days, without immunosuppression.
Data availability
Data will be made available upon request from Augustin Vigouroux augustin.vigouroux@free.fr; Lousineh Arakelian lousineh.arakelian@aphp.fr; or Briac Thierry (briac.thierry@aphp.fr).
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Acknowledgements
The authors disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: the authors acknowledge technical support from animal care and veterinary staff and Julie Piquet at the Biosurgical research laboratory of Fondation Carpentier. The authors also thank INRAe (French National Research Institute for Agriculture, Food and the Environment) and Sylvain Bourgeais for their technical support and supply. We would like to gratefully acknowledge Novatech SA for kindly supplying us with Boston Medical Products’ endotracheal stents, known as “Rutter stents”.Confocal and SEM images were acquired using the facilities of the Plateforme Microscopies & Analyses, Federation I-Mat (FR4122) of CY Cergy Paris University (France).
Funding
This work was supported by the Institut National de la Santé et de la Recherche Médicale (INSERM, grant EN_2020CINT05), l’Assistance publique – Hôpitaux de Paris (APHP), Fondation de l’Avenir pour la Recherche Médicale Appliquée (Grant MLHR2023-89), Agence de la Biomédecine (Grant 20Greffe011), Société Française d’ORL et Cervico-Faciale (SFORL), and Association Française de l’Atrésie de l’Œsophage. None of the funders were involved in carrying out the research or writing the results.
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B.T., L.A. Conceptualization; B.T., L.A. Methodology; B.T. J.M.A Software; B.T., L.A. Validation; B.T., J.M.A., D.B. Formal analysis; B.T., A.V. Investigation; all authors Resources; B.T. Data curation; A.V. Writing – original draft; all authors. Writing - Review & Editing; all authors Visualization; B.T., L.A., J.L. Supervision; B.T., L.A. Project administration; B.T., J.L. Funding acquisition.
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Vigouroux, A., Bonnin, Y., Gendron, N. et al. Biointegration of a partially decellularized tracheal scaffold in a porcine model - preliminary results. Sci Rep (2026). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-026-37823-1
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-026-37823-1
