A simple and scalable 3D printing methodology for generating aligned and extended human and murine skeletal muscle tissues

Preclinical biomedical and pharmaceutical research on disease causes, drug targets, and side effects increasingly relies on models of human tissue. 3D printing offers unique opportunities for generating models of superior physiological accuracy, as well as for automating their fabrication. Towards t...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Biomedical materials (Bristol) 2022-07, Vol.17 (4), p.45013
Main Authors: Cakal, Selgin D, Radeke, Carmen, Alcala, Juan F, Ellman, Ditte G, Butdayev, Sarkhan, Andersen, Ditte C, Calloe, Kirstine, Lind, Johan U
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
3D printing
Animals
Humans
Hydrogels
Mice
micro-extrusion
Muscle Fibers, Skeletal
Muscle, Skeletal
myotubes
Printing, Three-Dimensional
self organization
skeletal muscle
Tissue Engineering - methods
tissue models
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Summary:Preclinical biomedical and pharmaceutical research on disease causes, drug targets, and side effects increasingly relies on models of human tissue. 3D printing offers unique opportunities for generating models of superior physiological accuracy, as well as for automating their fabrication. Towards these goals, we here describe a simple and scalable methodology for generating physiologically relevant models of skeletal muscle. Our approach relies on dual-material micro-extrusion of two types of gelatin hydrogel into patterned soft substrates with locally alternating stiffness. We identify minimally complex patterns capable of guiding the large-scale self-assembly of aligned, extended, and contractile human and murine skeletal myotubes. Interestingly, we find high-resolution patterning is not required, as even patterns with feature sizes of several hundred micrometers is sufficient. Consequently, the procedure is rapid and compatible with any low-cost extrusion-based 3D printer. The generated myotubes easily span several millimeters, and various myotube patterns can be generated in a predictable and reproducible manner. The compliant nature and adjustable thickness of the hydrogel substrates, serves to enable extended culture of contractile myotubes. The method is further readily compatible with standard cell-culturing platforms as well as commercially available electrodes for electrically induced exercise and monitoring of the myotubes.
ISSN:1748-6041
1748-605X
DOI:10.1088/1748-605X/ac6b71