Abstract
In the last few years microfluidics and microfabrication technique principles have been extensively exploited for biomedical applications. In this framework, organs-on-a-chip represent promising tools to reproduce key features of functional tissue units within microscale culture chambers. These systems offer the possibility to investigate the effects of biochemical, mechanical, and electrical stimulations, which are usually applied to enhance the functionality of the engineered tissues. Since the functionality of muscle tissues relies on the 3D organization and on the perfect coupling between electrochemical stimulation and mechanical contraction, great efforts have been devoted to generate biomimetic skeletal and cardiac systems to allow high-throughput pathophysiological studies and drug screening. This review critically analyzes microfluidic platforms that were designed for skeletal and cardiac muscle tissue engineering. Our aim is to highlight which specific features of the engineered systems promoted a typical reorganization of the engineered construct and to discuss how promising design solutions exploited for skeletal muscle models could be applied to improve cardiac tissue models and vice versa.
Highlights
This review critically summarizes microfluidic platforms for cardiac and skeletal muscle tissue engineering that were developed during the last five years, highlighting which system architectures promoted specific features of the engineered tissue, and suggesting future directions by emphasizing how specific design solutions exploited for the skeletal side of the muscle could be applied to the cardiac side and vice versa
We have highlighted some of the similarities between cardiac and skeletal muscle tissues and we have discussed different approaches that were used to analyze their features at different levels, from actin-myosin interactions to the contraction of the whole tissue
Allowed the measurement of the stress generated by the constructs, while the approach based on cardiac bodies [60] permitted to analyze the spontaneous beating frequency of 3D tissue constructs
Summary
Why is microfluidics so appealing? The trend of publications containing the word microfluidics has continuously grown during the past years with a 55% net increase from 2010 to 2015 [1]. Several efforts have been made to develop organs-on-a-chip mimicking the complexity of heart and skeletal muscle, whose functionality is based on the effective coupling between electrochemical stimulation and mechanical contraction. In this context, electrical stimulation has been reported to increase cardiomyocyte spreading and alignment [8] and induce differentiation of embryonic stem cells towards a cardiac phenotype [9], while both cardiomyocytes [10] and myoblasts [11] respond to modulations of the mechanical environment. This review critically summarizes microfluidic platforms for cardiac and skeletal muscle tissue engineering that were developed during the last five years, highlighting which system architectures promoted specific features of the engineered tissue, and suggesting future directions by emphasizing how specific design solutions exploited for the skeletal side of the muscle could be applied to the cardiac side and vice versa
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