Biosensor National Special Laboratory, Key Laboratory for Biomedical Engineering, Ministry of Education, Department of Biomedical Engineering, Zhejiang University, Hangzhou, 310027, China.
State Key Laboratory of Transducer Technology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Shanghai, 200050, China.
Adv Healthc Mater. 2022 Feb;11(3):e2100934. doi: 10.1002/adhm.202100934. Epub 2022 Jan 6.
Tissue engineering techniques have enabled to replicate the geometrical architecture of native tissues but usually fail to reproduce their exact cellular arrangements during the fabricating process, while it is critical for manufacturing physiologically relevant tissues. To address this problem, a "sewing-like" method of controlling cellular alignment during the fabricating process is reported here. By integrating the stretching step into the fabricating process, a static mechanical environment is created which, in turn, regulates the subsequent cellular alignment, elongation, and differentiation in the generated tissues. With this method, patterned cellular constructs can be fabricated with controlled cellular alignment. Moreover, this method shows a potent capability to fabricate physiologically relevant skeletal muscle constructs in vitro by mechanically inducing myoblast fusion and maturation. As a potential clinical application, aligned myofibers are directly fabricated onto injured muscles in vivo, which repair the damaged tissues effectively. This study shows that the "sewing-like" method can produce engineered tissues with precise control of cellular arrangements and more clinically viable functionalities.
组织工程技术已经能够复制天然组织的几何结构，但在制造过程中通常无法复制其确切的细胞排列，而这对于制造生理相关的组织至关重要。为了解决这个问题，这里报道了一种“类似缝合”的方法，可在制造过程中控制细胞的排列。通过将拉伸步骤集成到制造过程中，可以创建一个静态机械环境，进而调节随后在生成的组织中细胞的排列、伸长和分化。通过这种方法，可以制造具有受控细胞排列的图案化细胞构建体。此外，该方法通过机械诱导成肌细胞融合和成熟，显示出在体外制造生理相关的骨骼肌构建体的强大能力。作为一种潜在的临床应用，将排列整齐的肌纤维直接在体内制造到受损的肌肉上，有效地修复了受损组织。这项研究表明，“类似缝合”的方法可以产生具有精确控制细胞排列和更具临床可行性功能的工程组织。
