Tissue Perfusion Strategies for Larger Bio-actuators
Introduction
Engineered, centimeter-scale skeletal muscle tissue can mimic muscle pathophysiology to study development, disease, regeneration, drug response, and motion. Larger engineered muscle promise larger force output generation, which is relevant for applications in bio-hybrid robotics. To build macroscale skeletal muscle tissue, we need to engineer perfusable channels that guarantee cell survival, but also to integrate support elements that enable mechanical cell stimulation and uniaxial myofiber formation.
Our Platform
We address the challenge of size-limit in engineered muscle tissue by designing strategies to perfuse our engineered tissue. We aim to achieve higher force output and improve actuation performance of 3D bio-actuator designs by augmenting the size of engineered skeletal muscle tissue and enabling its full maturity. We used high-resolution biofabrication and microfluidics to realize intratissular perfusable architectures for sufficient nutrient and gaseous exchange for the cells to survive, and enable the scaling up of engineered tissue beyond the cm-scale. Our perfusable muscle features a compelx design that allows for complete muscle tissue maturation and high cell survival throughout the tissue volume. Our cm-scale muscles have coprinted synthetic structures that display highly coherent interfaces with the living tissue; they feature perfusable designs preserve cells from hypoxia all over the scaffold volume; and they can undergo passive mechanical tension during matrix remodeling.
Applications
Extrusion-based multimaterial bioprinting with the inks and design realizes in vitro matured biohybrid SMT for biomedical applications. While our cm-scale constructs are promising for more performant bio-hybrid robotics, they can be used to study the distribution of drugs in models that account for fluid convection as found in the muscle microvascular unit.
Authors Involved
This research was conducted by a collaborative team from the Soft Robotics Lab at ETH Zurich, including:
Miriam Filippi
Aiste Balciunaite
Robert K. Katzschmann
