Extrahepatic bile duct defects due to gallbladder removal or tissue injury are frequently seen diseases. The effect of current surgery repair of these lesions is unsatisfactory because of its particularity in structure and function. Extrahepatic bile duct defects and their complications are benign lesions but with malignant outcomes. Thus it’s necessary to develop effective biomaterials for this kind of lesion.

To gain such biomaterials, scientists in Dr. Jianwu Dai’s group from the Institute of Genetics and Developmental Biology, the Chinese Academy of Sciences, cooperating with surgeons from the Affiliated Drum Tower Hospital of Nanjing University Medical School, developed collagen based functional biomaterial to repair extrahepatic bile duct defects and verified its excellent repairing effect in large animal model.

They developed the collagen binding bFGF(CBD-bFGF) to activate collagen scaffold. Using a pig extrahepatic bile duct injury model, they verified that the collagen/CBD-bFGF composite biomaterial could significantly promote the extrahepatic bile duct regeneration at the injury site without causing structure deformation or hepatic dysfunction during both short- and long- time observations. These results indicate that this functional biomaterial has good application prospects in clinic.

This work with Dr. Qiang Li and Liang Tao and Bing Chen as the co-first authors has been online published on Biomaterials (DOI:10.1016/j.biomaterials.2012.03.003). This research was supported by grants fromthe “Strategic Priority Research Program” of Chinese Academy of Sciences.

AUTHOR CONTACT:

Jianwu Dai, Ph.D.

Institute of Genetics and Developmetnal Biology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China.

E-mail: jwdai@genetics.ac.cn

　(Image by Qiang Li et al.)

Figure.Functional collagen scaffolds and its repairing effect in extrahepatic bile duct regeneration. (A) The appearance of functional collagen scaffold.(B)Scanning electron microscope photogram of functional collagen scaffold.(C)The anterior wall of the common bile duct was replaced with the collagen patch. (D-I) The histologic analysis of the repairing in extrahepatic bile duct injury