Eleonora Rossi

Despite clinical treatments for adipose tissue defects have certain grades of efficacy,
in particular for breast tissue reconstruction, many drawbacks are still affecting the
long-term survival of new-formed fat tissue. To overcome this problem, numerous
scaffolding materials based on either synthetic or natural polymers have been
investigated. In parallel, devitalized adipose tissue has shown great in vivo potential to
enhance regeneration and instruct repair of damaged soft tissues. Our aim was to
combine the positive features of a structural synthetic polymer and of an engineered,
devitalized extracellular matrix (ECM) to obtain a hybrid construct for the treatment
of adipose tissue defects. Towards achieving this goal, we adopted a biologically and
mechanically driven design to fabricate an RGD-mimetic poly(amidoamine) oligomer
macroporous foam (OPAAF) for adipose tissue reconstruction. The OPAAF is
characterized by an interconnected porous network and mechanical properties
resembling the native adipose tissue. Moreover, OPAAF supported cell adhesion,
proliferation and adipogenesis in vitro together with adipose tissue infiltration in vivo.
Afterwards, we further implemented the adipoinductive potential of the OPAAF by
decoration with a devitalized adipose tissue matrix deposited by human Adipose
Stromal Cells (hASCs). The hybrid ECM-OPAAF showed to have an adipoinductive
effect on hASCs in absence of any growth factor in vitro and promoted adipogenesis
in vivo.
Overall, these results proved that our approach can provide an alternative strategy for
adipose tissue reconstruction based on the use of patients cells for the generation of
custom made hybrid scaffolds.