Speaker
Description
Abstract
Skeletal muscle plays a critical role in voluntary movement and metabolic regulation, and its dysfunction is implicated in the onset and progression of musculoskeletal and systemic diseases. While interest in the development of therapeutics for skeletal muscle disorders is steadily increasing, conventional in vitro models are limited by low throughput, the complexity of platform fabrication, attributed to the slow prototyping process not ideal for therapeutic drug efficacy evaluation and difficulties in achieving reproducibility. To overcome these limitations, we developed the high-throughput vascularized muscle micro-tissues (VMM) platform utilizing three-dimensional (3D) bioprinting technology. This platform enables the high-throughput fabrication of 3D in vitro skeletal muscle tissues and physiologically relevant vascularized muscle constructs. By employing an automated 3D bioprinting system, rapid and reproducible tissue fabrication is achieved, making the platform highly suitable for scalable drug screening applications. We optimized the fabrication and culture processes to produce highly functional and mature muscle constructs. For platform construction, commercially available 96-well plates were utilized, and mushroom-shaped pin anchors were fabricated by introducing a controlled extrusion delay during the printing process, thereby promoting muscle fiber alignment and functional maturation. The VMM platform facilitates not only quantitative evaluation of muscle functionality but also detailed analysis of muscle-vascular interactions. Furthermore, this platform addresses the persistent challenges of reproducibility in skeletal muscle tissue engineering and holds significant promise for accelerating therapeutic discovery through high-throughput drug screening, ultimately contributing to innovation in healthcare through biofabrication.
Acknowledgement
This work was supported by the Korea government programs as follows: the Ministry of Science and ICT (MSIT) under Grant No. [2020R1A5A8018367], [RS-2022-NR067329], and [RS-2024-00423107], the Ministry of Trade, Industry & Energy (MOTIE) under Grant No. [20012378], and the Ministry of Agriculture, Food and Rural Affairs(MAFRA) under Grant No. [RS-2024-00397026].
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