Development of anisotropic hydrogel fibers for complex tissue construction

Abstract

In recent years, research targets in tissue engineering and regenerative medicine have shifted from simple tissues such as skin and muscle to more complex tissues. Various tissues exist in the body, and cells distributed in each layer play a wide range of essential roles for the body by performing their respective functions. Hydrogel-based techniques are often used to construct such structures in tissue engineering. One such method is the use of gel fibers. In the construction of gel fibers, the shape of the constructed gel fiber can be changed by changing the flow of the material solution. In this study, we propose a method to construct a system in which multiple types of fibers are switched to form a single fiber, and to add a pulsed flow generation mechanism that can switch the flow velocity by using a device. This method is used to construct gel fibers for tissue construction with complex geometries.