Region‐specific brain decellularized scaffolds can recover cell viability in an oxygen-glucose deprivation model

Brain decellularized extracellular matrix (ECM) can be an attractive scaffold capable of mimicking the native ecosystem of the central nervous system tissue. In this study, we studied the in vitro response of neural lineage cells exposed to region-specific brain decellularized ECM scaffolds from three distinct neuroanatomical sections: cortex, cerebellum and remaining areas. First, the evaluation of each brain subregion was performed with the isotropic fractionator method to understand the cellular composition of the different cerebral areas. Second, each of the cerebral subregions was subjected to the decellularization process and their respective characterization using molecular, histological, and ultrastructural techniques. Third, the presence of neurotrophic factors in the decellularized brain scaffold was analyzed. Finally, we studied the region-specific brain decellularized ECM as a mimetic platform for the maturation of PC12 cells and for the recovery of cell viability in an oxygen-glucose deprivation model. Our results show that region-specific brain decellularized ECM can serve as a biomimetic scaffold capable of promoting the growth of neural lineage cells and, in addition, it possesses a combination of structural and biochemical signals ( e.g. , neurotrophic factors) that are capable of inducing cell phenotypic changes that can promote cell recovery and viability in a stroke/ischemia model in vitro .