Developing tools for inter-site transport of brain tissue models in tissue engineering research

Abstract

Penetrating traumatic brain injury (pTBI) remains one of the leading causes of death in the younger population in the UK, as no clinical regenerative therapies are available. Experimental therapies currently being screened for efficacy are wide ranging and complex (such as biomaterial implantation, nanotherapies and electrostimulation) which require effective multi-disciplinary collaboration between biological and physical scientists, such as engineers, chemists and physicists. Generating complex and pathomimetic models of pTBI requires costly equipment, expert training and access to animal facilities, making them logistically inaccessible to the majority of physical scientists, representing a bottleneck in neurotherapy development.
Developing the capacity for inter-site transport of complex brain injury models would significantly ease this logistical barrier. Specifically, complex primary models of pTBI can be transported to sites remote from the site of biological model production for testing, promoting multi-disciplinary collaboration and efficiency in cross-disciplinary research.
Our laboratory recently developed two multicellular and in vitro primary cortical models of pTBI (a glial and neuronal model) which offer significant advantages as facile but complex, injury simulating and pathomimetic models of pTBI. The objective of this study was to establish if HibernateTM, a commercially available neural tissue storage medium, could be used safely for storage and transport of these model at room temperature (RT) (removing the need for cold chain transport), without detriment to neural cell viability, maturation or reactivity.
Findings indicate there is no effect of HibernateTM storage at RT for four hours on neural cell culture confluency, overall cell viability or proportions of each cell type. Moreover, neurons and oligodendrocytes show no significant decrease in maturation after storage, nor do astrocytes and microglia show any significant increase in reactivity. This indicates transportation of primary neural models is feasible and could facilitate multi-site transport of complex brain tissue models for neuroregenerative research.