We engineered functional cardiac patches by seeding neonatal rat cardiomyocytes onto carbon nanotube (CNT) incorporated photocrosslinkable gelatin methacrylate (GelMA) hydrogel. The resulting cardiac constructs showed excellent mechanical integrity and advanced electrophysiological functions. Specifically, myocardial tissues cultured on 50 μm thick CNT-GelMA showed 3 times higher spontaneous synchronous beating rates and 85% lower excitation threshold, compared to those cultured on pristine GelMA hydrogels. Our results indicate that the electrically conductive and nanofibrous networks formed by CNTs within a porous gelatin framework is the key characteristics of CNT-GelMA leading to improved cardiac cell adhesion, organization, and cell-cell coupling. Centimeter-scale patches were released from glass substrates to form 3D biohybrid actuators, which showed controllable linear cyclic contraction/extension, pumping, and swimming actuations. In addition, we demonstrate for the first time that cardiac tissues cultured on CNT-GelMA resist damage by a model cardiac inhibitor as well as a cytotoxic compound. Therefore, incorporation of CNTs into gelatin, and potentially other biomaterials, could be useful in creating multifunctional cardiac scaffolds for both therapeutic purposes and in vitro studies. These hybrid materials could also be used for neuron and other muscle cells to create tissue constructs with improved organization, electroactivity, and mechanical integrity.

No abstract

Aerogels have numerous applications due to their high surface area and low densities. However, creating aerogels from a large variety of materials has remained an outstanding challenge. Here, we report a new methodology to enable aerogel production with a wide range of materials. The method is based on the assembly of anisotropic nano-objects (one-dimensional (1D) nanotubes, nanowires, or two-dimensional (2D) nanosheets) into a cross-linking network from their colloidal suspensions at the transition from the semi-dilute to the isotropic concentrated regime. The resultant aerogels have highly porous and ultrafine three-dimensional (3D) networks consisting of 1D (Ag, Si, MnO2, single-walled carbon nanotubes (SWNTs)) and 2D materials (MoS2, graphene, h-BN) with high surface areas, low densities, and high electrical conductivities. This method opens up a facile route for aerogel production with a wide variety of materials and tremendous opportunities for bio-scaffold, energy storage, thermoelectric, catalysis, and hydrogen storage applications.

No abstract

Carbon-based nanomaterials have been considered as promising candidates to mimic certain structure and function of native extracellular matrix materials for tissue engineering. Significant progress has been made in fabricating carbon nanoparticle-incorporated cell culture substrates, but limited studies have been reported on the development of three-dimensional (3D) tissue constructs using these nanomaterials. Here, we present a novel approach to engineer 3D multi-layered constructs using layer-by-layer (LbL) assembly of cells separated with self-assembled graphene oxide (GO)-based thin films. The GO-based structures are shown to serve as cell adhesive sheets that effectively facilitate the formation of multi-layer cell constructs with interlayer connectivity. By controlling the amount of GO deposited in forming the thin films, the thickness of the multi-layer tissue constructs could be tuned with high cell viability. Specifically, this approach could be useful for creating dense and tightly connected cardiac tissues through the co-culture of cardiomyocytes and other cell types. In this work, we demonstrated the fabrication of stand-alone multi-layer cardiac tissues with strong spontaneous beating behavior and programmable pumping properties. Therefore, this LbL-based cell construct fabrication approach, utilizing GO thin films formed directly on cell surfaces, has great potential in engineering 3D tissue structures with improved organization, electrophysiological function, and mechanical integrity.