Construction of Engineered Muscle Tissue Consisting of Myotube Bundles in a Collagen Gel Matrix.

Tissue engineering methods that aim to mimic the hierarchical structure of skeletal muscle tissue have been widely developed due to utilities in various fields of biology, including regenerative medicine, food technology, and soft robotics. Most methods have aimed to reproduce the microscopical morphology of skeletal muscles, such as the orientation of myotubes and the sarcomere structure, and there is still a need to develop a method to reproduce the macroscopical morphology. Therefore, in this study, we aim to establish a method to reproduce the macroscopic morphology of skeletal muscle by constructing an engineered muscle tissue (EMT) by culturing embryonic chicken myoblast-like cells that are unidirectionally aligned in collagen hydrogels with micro-channels (i.