Bioengineers from the University of California, San Francisco report that they can recreate different 3D shapes from living tissue. The work was published yesterday in Developmental Cell.
The researchers can create bowls, coils, and ripples from living tissue by patterning mechanically active mouse or human cells to thin layers of extracellular matrix fibers. The cells collaborated mechanically through a web of these fibers to fold themselves up in predictable ways, mimicking natural developmental processes.
"Development is starting to become a canvas for engineering, and by breaking the complexity of development down into simpler engineering principles, scientists are beginning to better understand, and ultimately control, the fundamental biology," says senior author Zev Gartner. "In this case, the intrinsic ability of mechanically active cells to promote changes in tissue shape is a fantastic chassis for building complex and functional synthetic tissues."
Gartner's lab used a precision 3D cell-patterning technology called DNA-programmed assembly of cells to set up an initial spatial template of a tissue that then folds itself into complex shapes in ways that replicate how tissues assemble themselves hierarchically during development. This approach is advantageous as 3D printing and micro-molding often miss structural features of tissues that grow according to developmental programs.
"We're beginning to see that it's possible to break down natural developmental processes into engineering principles that we can then repurpose to build and understand tissues," says first author Alex Hughes. "It's a totally new angle in tissue engineering."
Gartner and his team are now looking to find out if they can stitch the developmental program that controls tissue folding together with others that control tissue patterning.
Image: Shapes made of living tissue made by the researchers. By patterning mechanically active mouse or human cells to thin layers of extracellular fibers, the researchers could create bowls, coils, and ripple shapes. Image courtesy of Alex Hughes.