Elucidation of effects of cyclic mechanical stimulation in micro muscle tissue

Abstract

For muscle tissue regeneration, it is considered that micro-scale tissue is superior for engraftment of transplanted tissue. In our previous study, myoblasts were cultured in a collagen gel-bead to reconstruct micro-size muscle tissue. However, the tissue orientation of tissue and contraction force were not sufficient for native muscle tissue. The purpose of this study is to promote tissue regeneration in the myoblast-seeded collagen gel bead using cyclic mechanical stress. The collagen gel-beads containing myoblasts (C2C12 cells) were constructed, and subjected to cyclic mechanical stress using the custom-made device which has smaller holes in diameter compared to that of gel bead to aspirate the bead cyclically. Moreover, the mechanical environment in gel-bead was analyzed using a commercial numerical analysis software. As the result, it was suggested that the cyclic mechanical stimuli promoted the myogenesis in the collagen gel bead.