Quantitative results of the analysis of relevant components of artificial bilayered substitutes developed by tissue engineering

Resumen

This dataset corresponds to the quantification results carried out for artificial bilayered substitutes developed by tissue engineering and control tissues analyzed in the manuscript entitled "Understanding extracellular matrix maturation in artificial tissue substitutes generated by tissue engineering". Tissue engineering techniques offer new strategies to understand complex processes in a controlled and reproducible system. In this study, we generated bilayered human tissue substitutes consisting of a cellular connective tissue with a suprajacent epithelium (full-thickness stromal-epithelial substitutes or SESS), and human tissue substitutes with an epithelial layer generated on top of an acellular biomaterial (epithelial substitutes or ESS). Both types of artificial tissues were studied at sequential time periods to analyze the maturation process of the extracellular matrix (ECM) using histochemical and immunohistochemical techniques. Results showed that both models were able to exhibit a partial development of the epithelial layer. ESS cells showed active proliferation, positive expression of KRT5 and low expression of differentiation markers, whereas SESS epithelium showed higher differentiation levels, with a progressive positive expression of KRT10 and claudin, although the differentiation levels of control native tissues were not reached. Despite the typical rete-ridges and papillae of native tissues were not found, stromal cells in SESS tended to accumulate and actively synthetize ECM components such as collagens and proteoglycans in the stromal area in direct contact with the epithelium (Z1 zone), whereas these components were very scarce in ESS. Regarding the basement membrane (BM), ESS showed a partially-differentiated structure containing fibronectin-1 (FN1) and perlecan (HSPG2), although the PAS staining signal was significantly lower than control native tissues. However, SESS showed higher BM differentiation, with positive expression of FN1, HSPG2, nidogen 1 (NID1), chondroitin-6-sulfate proteoglycans (CH6S), agrin (AGRN), and collagens types IV (COL-IV) and VII (COL-VII), although this structure was negative for lumican (LUM). These results confirm the relevance of epithelial-stromal interaction for ECM development and differentiation, especially regarding BM components, and suggest the usefulness of bilayered artificial tissue substitutes to reproduce ex vivo the ECM maturation and development process of human tissues. The original data obtained for the quantitative analyses of each component are shown in this dataset.