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Tissue Engineering: Construction of a Multicellular 3D Scaffold for the Delivery of Layered Cell Sheets
Published on: October 3, 2014
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Automatic fabrication of 3-dimensional tissues using cell sheet manipulator technique
Tetsutaro Kikuchi1, Tatsuya Shimizu2, Masanori Wada3
1Institute of Advanced Biomedical Engineering and Science, Tokyo Women's Medical University (TWIns), 8-1 Kawada-cho, Shinjuku-ku, Tokyo 162-8666, Japan; CellSeed Incorporated, Katsura-Bldg. 4F, 3-61, Haramachi, Shinjuku-ku, Tokyo 162-0053, Japan.
Biomaterials
|December 28, 2013
Summary
An automated apparatus stacks cell sheets to create 3D tissue constructs. This manufacturing system shows promise for cost-effective, large-scale production of tissue-engineered therapeutic products.
Area of Science:
- Biotechnology
- Tissue Engineering
- Manufacturing Automation
Background:
- Automated manufacturing is crucial for the economic viability and widespread use of tissue-engineered therapeutic products.
- Current methods for creating 3D tissue constructs often lack scalability and cost-effectiveness.
Purpose of the Study:
- To develop an automated apparatus for fabricating 3D tissue-engineered constructs using a cell sheet stacking technique.
- To optimize conditions for reproducible production of multilayered cell sheets.
Main Methods:
- Development of an automatic cell sheet stacking apparatus utilizing a cell sheet manipulator.
- Harvesting cell sheets from temperature-responsive culture dishes.
- Optimizing cell seeding and stacking conditions for human skeletal muscle myoblast (HSMM) sheets.
Main Results:
- Successfully fabricated five-layer HSMM sheets (approx. 70-80 μm thick) within 100 minutes.
- Histological analysis confirmed stratified structure with no delamination in the five-layer constructs.
- Live cell counts indicated initial viability, but five-layer constructs showed a slight decrease in cell numbers after 5-day static culture compared to thinner constructs, suggesting thickness limitations.
Conclusions:
- The developed automated apparatus, combining cell sheet manipulation and robotics, can reproducibly create multilayered cell sheets.
- The system offers a secure, cost-effective manufacturing solution for tissue-engineered products.
- Further research may be needed to address thickness limitations for long-term static culture maintenance.
