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RESEARCH ARTICLE
3D-bioprinted in vitro skeletal muscle with pennate fiber architecture to enhance contractile function
Lin Gao1,2* ,
Liuhe Li1,2 ,
Wenze Wu1,2 ,
Junnan Feng1,2 ,
Ziwei Liu1,2 ,
Jiankang He1,2 ,
Dichen Li1,2
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1
State Key Laboratory for Manufacturing System Engineering, School of Mechanical Engineering, Xi’an Jiaotong University, Xi’an, Shaanxi,
China
2
National Medical Products Administration (NMPA) Key Laboratory for Research and Evaluation of Additive Manufacturing Medical Devices, Xi’an Jiaotong University, Xi’an, Shaanxi,
China
Submitted: 29 July 2024 | Accepted: 3 September 2024 | Published: 3 September 2024
© 2024 by the Author(s). This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License ( https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ )
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.
Graphical abstract
Keywords
Skeletal muscle
3D bioprinting
Pennate muscle
Contraction performance
Funding
This work is supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (grant number: 52175276) and the Program for Innovation Team of Shaanxi Province (2023-CX-TD-17).
Conflict of interest
Jiankang He serves as the Editorial Board Member of the journal, but was not in any way involved in the editorial and peer-review process conducted for this paper, directly or indirectly. Other authors declare they have no competing interests.
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