Frank A. Rickey, Jr., David Elmore, PRIME Lab, Department of Physics, Purdue University

Darren Hillegonds, Department of Chemistry, Purdue University

Steve Badylak, Rae Record, Abby Simmons-Byrd, Department of Biomedical Engineering, Purdue University

Preprint AMS-8

Small Intestinal Submucosa (SIS) is an unusual tissure which shows great promise for the repair of damaged tissue in humans. When the SIS is properly prepared, it is not rejected by the host immune system, and in fact stimulates the regeneration of tissue to replace that modeled by SIS.

In dogs, these SIS scaffolds have been used to grow new arteries, tendons, and bladder surfaces. Moreover, the SIS scaffold tissue seems to disappear from the implant region after a few months. The fate of this SIS tissue is of considerable importance if it is to be used in human tissue regeneration.

SIS is normally obtained from pigs. We have labeled the SIS in several pigs by giving them IV doses of ¹⁴ C enriched proline throughout the period from immediately after birth to market weight. The prepared SIS was then implanted in dogs, as scaffolds for urinary bladder patches.

During the remaining life of each dog, blood, urine, and feces samples were collected on a regular schedule. AMS analysis of these were performed to measure the elimination rate of the SIS. At different intervals, the dogs were sacrificed. Tissue samples were analyzed by AMS in order to determine the whole-body distribution of the labeled SIS.