Impact

Ethics, Social, and Environmental Considerations

Firstly, there are ethical concerns regarding the collection of tissue for our in vitro experiments. We are currently using porcine tissue from a biobank and we need to make sure that we are following the FDA and AVMA guidelines for proper treatment of the animals. Next, we also need to consider the accessibility and equity of the treatment’s distribution. 

Regarding societal concerns, there is not a direct concern right now for the project, but in the future when stem cells can be seeded in the gel, consideration of cultural and religious factors in relation to societal acceptance should be prioritized. 

A very important environmental concern with our project is the type and amount of waste that it entails. Our decellularization protocol utilizes SDS to make our wash solution, with 100g of powdered or pelletized SDS per 1000mL of water, and 1mL of solution per 0.045g of tissue washed, per wash, for 3 washes for 5 days. SDS, or sodium dodecyl sulfate, is acutely toxic, flammable, and very harmful to aquatic life. Thus, this is important when considering how much waste our experiments produce, where this waste is disposed of, and how this can be detrimental to the environment. 

Page lead: Sammy Ngo