Protocols to Support the Development of Regenerative Medicine

The progress of regenerative medicine towards clinical use is currently hindered by the lack of a suitable non-destructive, 3D imaging method. This is necessary to perform a series of assessments essential to clinical translation, e.g. of the integrity and suitability of the scaffold (e.g. that it is completely cell-free if it has been obtained through a decellularization method), of the correct cell-scaffold interactions during the organ generation process and, last but not least, to ensure that the final regenerated organ fulfils the necessary requirements before implantation in a patient. Histology is used in current studies, and this is both destructive and 2D; conventional micro-CT cannot be used because it lacks the necessary soft-tissue contrast. We have shown that the high soft-tissue sensitivity of our phase-contrast CT methods provides outcomes comparable to histology, while remaining fully three-dimensional and non-destructive. We therefore expect its adoption to lead to significant progress in the clinical translation of regenerative medicine and tissue engineering approaches.