Cryopreservation of tissue engineered skeletal muscle

biobot;bioactuator;skeletal muscle;tissue engineering;cryopreservation

Grant, Lauren ; Bashir ; Rashid

关键词: biobot;    bioactuator;    skeletal muscle;    tissue engineering;    cryopreservation;   

Others  :  https://www.ideals.illinois.edu/bitstream/handle/2142/101509/GRANT-THESIS-2018.pdf?sequence=1&isAllowed=y

美国|英语

来源: The Illinois Digital Environment for Access to Learning and Scholarship

【 摘 要 】

Tissue engineered skeletal muscle plays an important role not only in the field of regenerative medicine, but also in emerging areas such as soft robotics, organ-on-a-chip models of disease, and drug testing. However, further expansion of the applications of tissue engineered skeletal muscle models will require a suitable method for their long-term storage and shipment. Cryopreservation has long been the standard for long-term cell storage, but when it comes to the freezing of 3D tissues, many complications arise due to heat and mass transfer limitations. Here, we use a tissue engineered skeletal muscle bioactuator as a model to characterize the effects of freezing on skeletal muscle viability, gene expression, myotube structure, and force generation. We optimize the freezing medium composition and compare the effects of freezing on both undifferentiated and differentiated engineered skeletal muscle tissue constructs. We report an optimized protocol of freezing skeletal muscle constructs while undifferentiated, which not only maintains cell viability, but leads to a 3-fold increase in force production as compared to unfrozen muscle. The reported timeline for skeletal muscle tissue fabrication, freezing, and revival not only promotes a more streamlined fabrication process, but will further enable collaborative research efforts through the shipment of pre-formed skeletal muscle constructs.