Perfusable biohybrid designs for bioprinted skeletal muscle tissue

ABSTRACT Engineered, centimeter-scale skeletal muscle tissue (SMT) can mimic muscle pathophysiology to study development, disease, regeneration, drug response, and motion. Macroscale SMT requires perfusable channels to guarantee cell survival and support elements to enable mechanical cell stimulation and uniaxial myofiber formation. Here, stable biohybrid designs of centimeter-scale SMT are realized via extrusion-based bioprinting of an optimized polymeric blend based on gelatin methacryloyl and sodium alginate, which can be accurately co-printed with other inks. A perfusable microchannel network is designed to functionally integrate with perfusable anchors for insertion into a maturation culture template. The results demonstrate that ( i ) co-printed synthetic structures display highly coherent interfaces with the living tissue; ( ii ) perfusable designs preserve cells from hypoxia all over the scaffold volume; and ( iii ) constructs can undergo passive mechanical tension during matrix remodeling. Extrusion-based multimaterial bioprinting with our inks and design realizes in vitro matured biohybrid SMT for biomedical, nutritional, and robotic applications.