Fabrication of skeletal muscle constructs by topographic activation of cell alignment

Skeletal muscle fiber construction for tissue-engineered grafts requires assembly of unidirectionally aligned juxtaposed myotubes. To construct such a tissue, a polymer microchip with linearly aligned microgrooves was fabricated that could direct myoblast adaptation under stringent conditions. The closely spaced microgrooves fabricated by a modified replica molding process guided linear cellular alignment. Examination of the myoblasts by immunofluorescence microscopy demonstrated that the microgrooves with subcellular widths and appropriate height-to-width ratios were required for practically complete linear alignment of myoblasts. The topology-dependent cell alignment encouraged differentiation of myoblasts into multinucleate, myosin heavy chain positive myotubes. The monolayer of myotubes formed on the microstructured chips allowed attachment, growth and differentiation of subsequent layers of linearly arranged myoblasts, parallel to the primary monolayer of myotubes. The consequent deposition of additional myoblasts on the previous layer of myotubes resulted in three-dimensional multi-layered structures of myotubes, typical of differentiated skeletal muscle tissue. The findings demonstrate that the on-chip device holds promise for providing an efficient means for guided muscle tissue construction.