Tissue Engineering and Regenerative Medicine (TERM)

There are three key elements in tissue engineering and regenerative medicine, the cells, the scaffolds and the signals. “Cells” referred to stem cells or somatic cells with tissue repairing functions. “Scaffolds” in our body referred to the natural collagen scaffolds for cell attachment and proliferation and perform their regeneration functions. And “signals” referred to the growth factors, cytokines or any signaling molecules present in the blood circulation, that are capable in stimulating cell growth, cell differentiation and tissue repairing. With the combination of these three elements, most of the tissue damages and degeneration can be fixed. 

When tissues or organs are damaged, the natural collagen scaffolds are impaired as well. Providing a proper natural collagen scaffold in time of need facilitates the tissue regeneration process. For decades, collagen scaffolds are prepared by first purification of atelo-collagen from animal tissues and then reconstituting into various forms of scaffold structures through a process called fibrillogenesis. The purification process damages the natural scaffold structure, weakens the mechanical strength of collagen scaffold, makes the collagen scaffold more easily degraded. Chemical cross-linking agent is thus added to prolong the efficacy of those reconstructed collagen scaffolds. Countless side effects derived from using of the toxic chemical cross-liking agents have been reported.
ACRO Biomedical uses its proprietary supercritical CO2 (scCO2) extraction technology to remove fats, cells and non-collagenous proteins from animal tissues and organs, while leaving the collagen scaffolds intact as the biomaterials for tissue engineering. The tissue or organ scaffolds prepared by our scCO2 process are chemical residue-free, cell-free and maintain their original scaffold structures and mechanical strength. Our platform technology can be applied to various tissues and organs, and from different animals and/or human tissues and organs.

Cell Therapy

We have combined various natural tissue scaffolds with stem cells or somatic cells to work on cell therapy for skin and cartilage regeneration. Without the scaffolds, cell alone will not perform well tissue regeneration. We believe that natural collagen scaffolds provide matrices for stem cells attachment, proliferation and differentiation, so that the damaged tissues can be repaired.

Organ Engineering

We are also working on in vivo reconstruction of the decellularized organ scaffolds. By putting a natural organ scaffold back to a live animal, we hope to see the repopulation of stem cells on the organ scaffold and then differentiation into the right cell types, and thus performing their biological functions. We are working on reconstruction of heart, liver and kidney.