Engineering anisotropic tissues: from structured scaffolds to magnetic actuation.

Area of Science:

• Biomedical Engineering
• Tissue Engineering
• Materials Science

Background:

• Native tissues exhibit complex, anisotropic structures crucial for function.
• Replicating multiscale complexity is vital for physiologically relevant tissue models.
• Skeletal muscle serves as a key example of anisotropic tissue.

Purpose of the Study:

• To review current strategies for engineering anisotropic tissues.
• To examine material- and fabrication-based approaches.
• To highlight emerging techniques, particularly magnetic-based methods.

Main Methods:

• Review of existing literature on anisotropic tissue engineering.
• Analysis of surface engineering, scaffold fabrication, and 3D bioprinting.
• Evaluation of external force-based methods (electrical, acoustofluidic, magnetic) and cell self-organization.

Main Results:

• Diverse strategies exist, including 2D surface engineering, architected scaffolds, and 3D bioprinting.
• External stimuli like magnetic fields enable precise control over micro- and macro-scale tissue organization.
• Magnetic strategies offer remote, spatially precise, and tunable control for generating complex anisotropic architectures.

Conclusions:

• Magnetic-based approaches show significant promise for anisotropic tissue engineering.
• These methods can create architectures difficult to achieve with conventional techniques.
• Further development is needed to establish magnetic strategies as a mainstream approach.