Engineering a Quantitative Organ-on-a-Chip Platform for Myogenic Mechanobiology.

Area of Science:

• Biomedical Engineering
• Cell Biology
• Mechanobiology

Background:

• Limited in vitro platforms exist for quantitative control of myogenic mechanical microenvironments.
• Understanding how mechanical cues regulate muscle cell organization, alignment, and maturation is crucial.

Purpose of the Study:

• To engineer a novel organ-on-a-chip platform for precise mechanical stimulation of muscle cells.
• To quantitatively map stress-strain relationships and analyze cellular responses to cyclic mechanical strain.
• To investigate conserved mechanosensitive responses in cardiomyocytes and skeletal muscle cells.

Main Methods:

• Engineered a pneumatic-driven organ-on-a-chip with a flexible PDMS membrane for cyclic strain delivery.
• Utilized finite element analysis for optimizing membrane deformation and stress-strain mapping.
• Applied plasma treatment and collagen coating to enhance cell adhesion on PDMS.
• Applied cyclic strain (up to 13%) to cardiomyocytes and skeletal muscle cells.

Main Results:

• The platform generated stable, tunable cyclic strain with a linear pressure-stress-strain relationship.
• Cyclic strain induced pronounced and uniform alignment of both cell types.
• Mechanical loading significantly enhanced contractile maturation markers (MYH7, MYH6) without altering differentiation markers (MyoG).

Conclusions:

• The developed organ-on-a-chip platform enables quantitative study of myogenic mechanobiology.
• Mechanical stimulation promotes conserved alignment and contractile maturation across myogenic lineages.
• This platform offers a versatile tool for biomedical research, disease modeling, and mechanotherapeutic screening.