Acoustic Tweezers-Assisted Biomaterial Molding in Petri Dishes (TAMP) for Engineering Glioma Tissues With Controlled...

Tissue engineering has shown great potential for manufacturing tissue replacements and developing physiologically relevant tissue models. However, conventional tissue engineering strategies often face challenges in fabricating tissues simultaneously incorporating controlled cellular and extracellular matrix (ECM) architectures. Here, we introduce Acoustic Tweezers-Assisted Biomaterial Molding in Petri Dishes (TAMP), enabling tissue fabrication with controlled cellular and ECM architectures in Petri dishes, specifically, producing constructs with customized ECM geometries and various internal cellular architectures, including parallel elongated cell bundles, arrays of interconnected cell spheroids, and lattice-like cellular networks. TAMP leverages a portable acoustic array that delivers standing waves into a Petri dish or a polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS) mold, thereby enabling a unique "dual-control" mechanism. The acoustic field arranges internal cells into parallel line-like and lattice-like patterns, while the PDMS mold defines the overall ECM geometry. Our approach was demonstrated by arranging micro-objects into various patterns within different-shaped molds and fabricating glioma tissues with various unique internal cellular architectures, including parallel elongated glioma tissue bundles, lattice-like glioma tissue networks, and chains of interconnected glioma spheroids. We anticipate the TAMP technique will lead to portable, easy-to-operate tools for engineering tissues with controlled cellular and ECM architectures for biomedical research, disease modeling, and drug testing.