Construction of 3D cardiac tissue with patterned vascular structure by inkjet printer head

Abstract

In currently available construction methods for artificial tissue, the internal structure of 3-D tissue is dependent on self- organization of cells. We hoped to provide a technology that enables more precise control of such internal structure in engineered 3-D tissue. In this report, we use cardiomyocytes differentiated from human induced pluripotent stem cells (iPS-CM), normal human arterial cardiac fibroblasts (NHCF) and human cardiac microvascular endothelial cells (HMVEC) as the models to construct multi-layered 3-D tissue. We aimed to deposit HMVECs in the 3-D tissue comprised of iPS-CM/NHCF using our inkjet printer head. In order to make the structure and the function closer to the natural tissue, we developed a new cell coating method using extracellular matrix (ECM). The result of this study demonstrates the potential of our new technologies in inkjet head and ECM-based cell coating to engineer functional 3-D tissue with improved precision in its internal structure.