In Vitro Assembly of Muscle Rings and Bioprinted Hydrogel for Branching Tubular Tissue Constructs

This paper describes a method to assemble muscle rings and a bioprinted hydrogel for fabrication of tubular tissue constructs. Muscle rings with circumferential alignment with contraction under electrical stimulation was achieved by culturing in ring-shaped PDMS mold. Bioprinted polyethylene glycol (PEG) hydrogel with 10 µm resolution enabled printing of various structures such as honeycomb, tubular and bifurcated structure. Followed by the glass capillary based transferring method, the muscle rings were effectively aligned to a PEG hydrogel with tubular structure. Our approach provides effective fabrication of circumferentially aligned tubular tissue constructs which have promising outlook in the field of regenerative medicine and drug screening models.