Biohybrid Muscle Fibers Integrated in a Three-dimensional Cellular Construct

We propose a method to construct a biohybrid tissue-like structure. In this structure, muscle fibers are fixed at several poles and maintain their tensions, and gold electrodes are located at the edges of the muscle fibers. Therefore, we can exercise contractions of the specific muscle fibers via the electrodes. Since a device with muscle fibers and electrodes is free-standing, it can be integrated in three-dimensional (3D) in vivo-like environments composed of living cells and extracellular matrixes (ECMs). We believe that our method is useful for fabrication of 3D hierarchic muscular structures for the evaluations of muscle behaviors in in vivo-like conditions.