A novel fabrication process of up‐scalable microfiber‐shaped tendon‐like tissue with high cell density for uniformed macroscale assembly

Abstract

This paper describes up‐scalable microfiber‐shaped tissues for macroscale tendon tissue reconstruction in vitro. C3H10T1/2 cells were encapsulated in a calcium alginate hydrogel microfiber that was fabricated via a double coaxial microfluidic device. The C3H10T1/2 cells gradually merged to construct the microfiber‐shaped tendon‐like tissue. Our microfiber‐shaped tendon‐like tissues were alive and maintained their microfiber‐shaped morphology over 600 days. Immunostaining and real‐time quantitative polymerase chain reaction analyses showed that our fabricated microfiber‐shaped tendon‐like tissue properly expressed tenomodulin and the orientation of the filaments of actin, which are one of the characteristics of tendon tissue in vivo. Furthermore, a macroscale tendon tissue assembly with ∼1 cm in length and ∼200 µm in thickness was successfully constructed by bundling the microfiber‐shaped tendon‐like tissues together. This feature enabled us to fabricate a macroscale tendon tissue with uniform cell distribution. We believe that our fabricated microfiber‐shaped tendon‐like tissue would be a suitable strategy to reconstruct tendon tissue in vitro for the treatments of tendon‐related injuries.