3D-bioprinted in vitro skeletal muscle with pennate fiber architecture to enhance contractile function
Year: 2024
Type: article
Abstract: Skeletal muscle tissue engineering (SMTE) has important research value and broad applicational prospects in areas such as muscle repair, disease modeling, drug testing, and biohybrid robotics. Despite advances in research on engineered skeletal muscles, it remains challenging to improve their functional performance, especially relatively large-sized muscles. Inspired by pennate muscles with a large force output capacity, a novel in vitro skeletal muscle tissue design mimicking the macro and microstructures of the gastrocnemius muscle in frogs was proposed and optimized through simulation. The cell-laden hydrogel was then 3D-bioprinted to fabricate tissues with fusiform geometry and induced microchannels with a pennate angle of 15°. The morphology, cell status, and contraction performance of 3D-bioprinted muscle tissues were evaluated after electrical stimulation, which induced the directional alignment of myotubes. The results indicated that our 3D-bioprinted pennate skeletal muscle tissues exhibited high cell viability (79.89%) and alignment of muscle fibers (51.93%), with a maximum contraction force of 443.085 μN, almost twice the force of 3D-printed parallel muscle tissues in our study. This work will support the exploration of design strategies and rapid manufacturing techniques for next-generation SMTEs with enhanced functional performance.
DOI: 10.36922/ijb.4371
Authors: Lin Gao, Liuhe Li, Wenze Wu, Junnan Feng, Ziwei Liu, Jiankang He, Dichen Li
Language: English
Subfield: Biomedical Engineering
Field: Engineering
Domain: Physical Sciences
Open Access status: diamond
OpenAlex ID: W4402233031