Volume: 57 Issue: 2
Year: 2026, Page: 342-347, Doi: https://doi.org/10.51966/jvas.2026.57.2.342-347
Received: Sept. 11, 2025 Accepted: Nov. 5, 2025 Published: June 30, 2026
Decellularised fish swim bladders are emerging as promising natural biomaterials for tissue engineering owing to their rich extracellular matrix composition. Despite this potential, species-specific variations in swim bladder structure remain underexplored, which may influence their suitability as scaffolds. In this context, the present study investigated the histological characteristics of the rohu fish (Labeo rohita) swim bladder and evaluated its structural suitability as a scaffold following decellularisation and crosslinking. Histological analyses revealed distinct architectural differences between the two chambers of the swim bladder. The anterior chamber consisted of sparsely arranged, wavy collagen fibres, while the posterior chamber exhibited abundant, thick and parallel-aligned collagen bundles interspersed with elastin fibres. Based on its dense and well-organised ECM network, the posterior chamber was selected for further processing by means of decellularisation and crosslinking. Decellularisation was employed to eliminate cellular and immunogenic components, thereby minimising potential immune responses and crosslinking was done to enhance the structural stability and durability of the resultant matrix. Subsequent evaluation unveiled that bovine bile mediated decellularisation efficiently removed cellular residues while preserving the native ECM organisation and EDC crosslinking helped to maintain tissue integrity. Collectively, the findings suggest that the posterior chamber of the rohu swim bladder could serve as a promising and sustainable natural source for future biocompatible scaffold fabrication and tissue engineering applications, warranting further investigation.
Keywords: Swim bladder, rohu fish, decellularisation, bovine bile, biomaterial, scaffolds
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© 2026 Naidile et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.
Naidile, K.R., Divya, C., Prasanna, K.S., Devi, S.S., Vasudevan, V.N., Laiju, M. Philip. 2025. Rohu fish swim bladder as a sustainable biomaterial: decellularisation and crosslinking for scaffold fabrication. Journal of Veterinary and Animal Sciences, 57(2),342-347 https://doi.org/10.51966/jvas.2026.57.2.342-347