Microfluidics for Bottom-Up Tissue Engineering
Shoji Takeuchi,
Professor and Director,
The University of Tokyo
In this presentation, I will talk about several Microfluidic-based
approaches for the rapid construction of 3D-cellular construct.
Large-scale 3D tissue architectures that mimic microscopic tissue
structures in vivo are very important for not only in tissue engineering
but also drug development without animal experiments. We demonstrated a
construction method of 3D tissue structures by using cell beads and
cell fibers. To prepare the cellular beads, we used an axisymmetric flow
focusing device (AFFD) that allows us to encapsulate cells within
monodisperse collagen beads. By molding these cell beads into a 3D
chamber and incubating them, we successfully obtained complicated and
milli-sized 3D cellular constructs. As the cell fibers, a
cell-encapsulating core-shell hydrogel fiber was produced in a double
coaxial laminar flow microfluidic device. When with myocytes,
endothelial, and nerve cells, they showed the contractile motion of the
myocyte cell fiber, the tube formation of the endothelial cell fibers
and the synaptic connections of the nerve cell fiber, respectively. By
reeling, weaving and folding the fibers using microfluidic handling,
higher-order assembly of fiber-shaped 3D cellular constructs can be
performed. Moreover, the fiber encapsulating beta-cells is used for the
implantation of diabetic mice, and succeeded in normalizing the blood
glucose level.
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