Three-Layered Hydrogel Microfiber for Maintaining Encapsulated Fiber-Shaped Muscle-Tissue

This paper proposes a three-layered hydrogel microfiber for improving the stability of the encapsulated three-dimensional (3D) muscle tissue. We formed an intermediate collagen scaffold layer between the outer calcium alginate hydrogel shell and the inner tissue core. An immortalized mouse myoblast cell line, C2C12, was encapsulated in our proposed three-layered (Ca-Alg./collagen/tissue) hydrogel microfibers to examine the stability of the C2C12 tissue. Our proposed microfiber sustained ~95% of the original fiber-shaped C2C12 tissue length, whereas the previously reported two-layered fiber could only retain ~70% after 11 days in culture, indicating that the proposed three-layered hydrogel microfiber enhanced the stability of the fiber-shaped tissue. We believe our microfiber could be useful to maturate the 3D microfiber-shaped tissues for pathology elucidation, drug efficacy evaluation, and regenerative medicine.