Bioprinting 3D microfibrous scaffolds for engineering endothelialized myocardium and heart-on-a-chip

Yu Shrike Zhang; Andrea Arneri; Simone Bersini; Su-Ryon Shin; Kai Zhu; Zahra Goli-Malekabadi; Julio Aleman; Cristina Colosi; Fabio Busignani; Valeria Dell'Erba; Colin Bishop; Thomas Shupe; Danilo Demarchi; Matteo Moretti; Marco Rasponi; Mehmet Remzi Dokmeci; Anthony Atala; Ali Khademhosseini

doi:10.1016/j.biomaterials.2016.09.003

Bioprinting 3D microfibrous scaffolds for engineering endothelialized myocardium and heart-on-a-chip

Biomaterials. 2016 Dec:110:45-59. doi: 10.1016/j.biomaterials.2016.09.003. Epub 2016 Sep 5.

Authors

Yu Shrike Zhang¹, Andrea Arneri², Simone Bersini³, Su-Ryon Shin⁴, Kai Zhu⁵, Zahra Goli-Malekabadi⁶, Julio Aleman⁷, Cristina Colosi⁸, Fabio Busignani⁹, Valeria Dell'Erba¹⁰, Colin Bishop¹¹, Thomas Shupe¹¹, Danilo Demarchi¹², Matteo Moretti¹³, Marco Rasponi¹⁴, Mehmet Remzi Dokmeci⁴, Anthony Atala¹¹, Ali Khademhosseini¹⁵

Affiliations

¹ Biomaterials Innovation Research Center, Division of Engineering in Medicine, Department of Medicine, Brigham and Women's Hospital, Harvard Medical School, Cambridge, MA 02139, USA; Harvard-MIT Division of Health Sciences and Technology, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA 02139, USA; Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA 02139, USA. Electronic address: yszhang@research.bwh.harvard.edu.
² Biomaterials Innovation Research Center, Division of Engineering in Medicine, Department of Medicine, Brigham and Women's Hospital, Harvard Medical School, Cambridge, MA 02139, USA; Harvard-MIT Division of Health Sciences and Technology, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA 02139, USA; Department of Electronics, Information and Bioengineering, Politecnico di Milano, Milan 20133, Italy.
³ Biomaterials Innovation Research Center, Division of Engineering in Medicine, Department of Medicine, Brigham and Women's Hospital, Harvard Medical School, Cambridge, MA 02139, USA; Harvard-MIT Division of Health Sciences and Technology, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA 02139, USA; Cell and Tissue Engineering Lab, IRCCS Istituto Ortopedico Galeazzi, Milan 20161, Italy.
⁴ Biomaterials Innovation Research Center, Division of Engineering in Medicine, Department of Medicine, Brigham and Women's Hospital, Harvard Medical School, Cambridge, MA 02139, USA; Harvard-MIT Division of Health Sciences and Technology, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA 02139, USA; Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA 02139, USA.
⁵ Biomaterials Innovation Research Center, Division of Engineering in Medicine, Department of Medicine, Brigham and Women's Hospital, Harvard Medical School, Cambridge, MA 02139, USA; Harvard-MIT Division of Health Sciences and Technology, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA 02139, USA; Department of Cardiac Surgery, Zhongshan Hospital, Fudan University, Shanghai 200032, China.
⁶ Biomaterials Innovation Research Center, Division of Engineering in Medicine, Department of Medicine, Brigham and Women's Hospital, Harvard Medical School, Cambridge, MA 02139, USA; Harvard-MIT Division of Health Sciences and Technology, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA 02139, USA; Department of Biomedical Engineering, Amirkabir University of Technology, Tehran 64540, Iran.
⁷ Biomaterials Innovation Research Center, Division of Engineering in Medicine, Department of Medicine, Brigham and Women's Hospital, Harvard Medical School, Cambridge, MA 02139, USA; Harvard-MIT Division of Health Sciences and Technology, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA 02139, USA.
⁸ Biomaterials Innovation Research Center, Division of Engineering in Medicine, Department of Medicine, Brigham and Women's Hospital, Harvard Medical School, Cambridge, MA 02139, USA; Harvard-MIT Division of Health Sciences and Technology, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA 02139, USA; Department of Chemistry, Sapienza Università di Roma, Rome 00185, Italy.
⁹ Biomaterials Innovation Research Center, Division of Engineering in Medicine, Department of Medicine, Brigham and Women's Hospital, Harvard Medical School, Cambridge, MA 02139, USA; Harvard-MIT Division of Health Sciences and Technology, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA 02139, USA; Department of Electronics and Telecommunications, Politecnico di Torino, Torino 10129, Italy.
¹⁰ Biomaterials Innovation Research Center, Division of Engineering in Medicine, Department of Medicine, Brigham and Women's Hospital, Harvard Medical School, Cambridge, MA 02139, USA; Harvard-MIT Division of Health Sciences and Technology, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA 02139, USA; Department of Biomedical Engineering, Politecnico di Torino, Torino 10129, Italy.
¹¹ Wake Forest Institute for Regenerative Medicine, Winston-Salem, NC 27101, USA.
¹² Department of Electronics and Telecommunications, Politecnico di Torino, Torino 10129, Italy.
¹³ Cell and Tissue Engineering Lab, IRCCS Istituto Ortopedico Galeazzi, Milan 20161, Italy; Swiss Institute for Regnerative Medicine, Lugano 6900, Switzerland; Cardiocentro Ticino, Lugano 6900, Switzerland.
¹⁴ Department of Electronics, Information and Bioengineering, Politecnico di Milano, Milan 20133, Italy.
¹⁵ Biomaterials Innovation Research Center, Division of Engineering in Medicine, Department of Medicine, Brigham and Women's Hospital, Harvard Medical School, Cambridge, MA 02139, USA; Harvard-MIT Division of Health Sciences and Technology, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA 02139, USA; Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA 02139, USA; Department of Bioindustrial Technologies, College of Animal Bioscience and Technology, Konkuk University, Seoul 143-701, Republic of Korea; Department of Physics, King Abdulaziz University, Jeddah 21569, Saudi Arabia. Electronic address: alik@bwh.harvard.edu.

Abstract

Engineering cardiac tissues and organ models remains a great challenge due to the hierarchical structure of the native myocardium. The need of integrating blood vessels brings additional complexity, limiting the available approaches that are suitable to produce integrated cardiovascular organoids. In this work we propose a novel hybrid strategy based on 3D bioprinting, to fabricate endothelialized myocardium. Enabled by the use of our composite bioink, endothelial cells directly bioprinted within microfibrous hydrogel scaffolds gradually migrated towards the peripheries of the microfibers to form a layer of confluent endothelium. Together with controlled anisotropy, this 3D endothelial bed was then seeded with cardiomyocytes to generate aligned myocardium capable of spontaneous and synchronous contraction. We further embedded the organoids into a specially designed microfluidic perfusion bioreactor to complete the endothelialized-myocardium-on-a-chip platform for cardiovascular toxicity evaluation. Finally, we demonstrated that such a technique could be translated to human cardiomyocytes derived from induced pluripotent stem cells to construct endothelialized human myocardium. We believe that our method for generation of endothelialized organoids fabricated through an innovative 3D bioprinting technology may find widespread applications in regenerative medicine, drug screening, and potentially disease modeling.

Keywords: Bioprinting; Cardiac tissue engineering; Cardiovascular toxicity; Heart-on-a-chip; Vascularization.

Publication types

Research Support, N.I.H., Extramural
Research Support, U.S. Gov't, Non-P.H.S.
Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't

MeSH terms

Bioprinting / methods*
Drug Evaluation, Preclinical
Endothelial Cells* / chemistry
Endothelial Cells* / cytology
Humans
Hydrogels / chemistry
Microfibrils / chemistry
Myocardium*
Myocytes, Cardiac / chemistry
Myocytes, Cardiac / metabolism
Organoids / chemistry
Organoids / growth & development*
Organoids / metabolism
Printing, Three-Dimensional*
Regenerative Medicine
Tissue Engineering / methods*
Tissue Scaffolds / chemistry*

Substances

Hydrogels

Abstract

Publication types

MeSH terms

Substances

Grants and funding