Abstract
BACKGROUND: Chronic kidney disease (CKD) remains a global health challenge, with tissue engineering strategies like decellularized scaffolds offering potential solutions for functional renal regeneration, yet hindered by the complexity of whole-organ recellularization. Since the recellularization process is limited in whole organs, we propose to decellularize renal tubules and assess whether they exhibit enhanced recellularization potential, thereby offering a novel strategy for kidney regeneration. METHODS: This study presents a microscale approach utilizing decellularized rat renal tubules to address these limitations. Renal tubules were microdissected from rat kidneys and then subjected to decellularization treatment with 0.5% sodium dodecyl sulfate (SDS) for 2 minutes. The decellularized renal tubules were structurally and compositionally characterized through immunofluorescence, transmission electron microscopy (TEM), DNA quantification, and collagen IV enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA). RESULTS: We successfully obtained decellularized renal tubule scaffolds, in which cellular components were removed while tubular basement membranes and extracellular matrix (ECM) architecture were preserved. TEM confirmed the ultrastructural integrity. CONCLUSIONS: The most significant contribution of this work is the establishment of a reproducible method for generating acellular renal tubule scaffolds that retain native ECM properties, providing a critical platform for studying cell-ECM interactions, disease modeling, and drug screening, thereby advancing targeted renal tissue engineering applications.