Tissue digestion for explanted alginate microcapsules???

[Ainhoa M]

I work in the field of cell encapsulation technology and our in vivo assays comprise the SC implantation of microcapsules. At the end of the study, microcapsules are retrieved from the SC space and my final aim is to analyse it histologically and in terms of released protein production (to see whether the encapsulated cells still keep alive).

I have tried a tissue digestion method to get rid of all the tissue formed around microcapsules, for the protein production assay, but I don't get quite good results.

I was told to use collagenase H (2mg/mL) and hialuronidase (1mg/mL) and to keep the tissue embedded in this solution in a water bath 37ºC, for three hours... (this was a protocol somebody used in the past here) but I don't think the results are too good and I would like to find alternatives.

Hope somebody can help me. Thank you very much in advance,

Ainhoa PhD student, Spain[/b]