Researchers have developed a suite of new heart engineering technologies. These technologies mimic the alignment of the heart’s contractile elements. In the future, this advance could enable the development of thick multilayered human muscle tissue.
They have developed a novel approach to treating cardiac tissue constructs. The team’s high-throughput approach to generating aOBBs enabled them to fabricate an unprecedented number of contractile building blocks for 3D bioprinting.
The first alignment step is the mechanical shear forces generated at the print head of the aOBBs while extruding them to give them directionality. To highlight the versatility of their bioprinting process, the researchers printed cardiac tissue sheets with linear, spiral, and chevron geometries. The team also wanted to measure the contractile features of cardiac constructs printed with aOBB-like filaments. For this, they printed long macrofilaments connecting two macropillars.
The Wyss Institute’s 3D Organ Engineering Initiative is tackling the holy grail of tissue engineering – whole organ transplantation. It aims to generate more physiological disease models and create highly architected myocardial patches that match and be used to replace a patient-specific scar after a heart attack.
Source: Wyss Institute
Name of Author: Benjamin Boettner