Technical progress in materials science and bioprinting has for the past few decades fostered considerable advances in medicine. More recently, the understanding of the processes of self-organization of cells into three-dimensional multicellular structures and the study of organoids have opened new perspectives for tissue engineering. Here, we review microengineering approaches for building functional tissues, and discuss recent progress in the understanding of morphogenetic processes and in the ability to steer them in vitro. On the basis of biological and technical considerations, we emphasize the achievements and remaining challenges of bringing together microengineering and morphogenesis. Our viewpoint underlines the importance of cellular self-organization for the success of tissue engineering in therapeutic applications. We reason that directed self-organization, at the convergence of microengineering and cellular self-organization, is a promising direction for the manufacturing of complex functional tissues.
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http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41551-017-0166-x | DOI Listing |
Chaos
January 2025
School of Physics and Information Technology, Shaanxi Normal University, Xi'an 710062, China.
Arrhythmia of the heart is a dangerous and potentially fatal condition. The current widely used treatment is the implantable cardioverter defibrillator (ICD), but it is invasive and affects the patient's quality of life. The sonogenetic mechanism proposed here focuses ultrasound on a cardiac tissue, controls endogenous stretch-activated Piezo1 ion channels on the focal region's cardiomyocyte sarcolemma, and restores normal heart rhythm.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFSci Rep
January 2025
Institute for Open and Transdisciplinary Research Initiatives, Osaka University, Yamadaoka 2-1, Suita, 565-0871, Osaka, Japan.
Heterogeneity is a critical determinant for multicellular pattern formation. Although the importance of microscale and macroscale heterogeneity at the single-cell and whole-system levels, respectively, has been well accepted, the presence and functions of mesoscale heterogeneity, such as cell clusters with distinct properties, have been poorly recognized. We investigated the biological importance of mesoscale heterogeneity in signal-relaying abilities (excitability) in the self-organization of spiral waves of intercellular communications by studying the self-organized pattern formation in a population of Dictyostelium discoideum cells, a classical signal-relaying system model.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFAdv Sci (Weinh)
January 2025
Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, Clear Water Bay, Kowloon, Hong Kong.
Nanoporous metals, a class of free-standing, high specific-area materials, evolve from interface-controlled self-organization in a selective dissolution (e.g., dealloying).
View Article and Find Full Text PDFCell Rep
January 2025
Department of Clinical Neurological Sciences, London Health Sciences Centre, Western University, London, ON, Canada; Department of Physiology and Pharmacology, Schulich School of Medicine and Dentistry, Western University, London, ON, Canada; Western Institute for Neuroscience, Western University, London, ON, Canada.
Cortical neurons in brain slices display intrinsic spike frequency adaptation (I-SFA) to constant current inputs, while extracellular recordings show extrinsic SFA (E-SFA) during sustained visual stimulation. Inferring how I-SFA contributes to E-SFA during behavior is challenging due to the isolated nature of slice recordings. To address this, we recorded macaque lateral prefrontal cortex (LPFC) neurons in vivo during a visually guided saccade task and in vitro in brain slices.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBiomedicines
November 2024
Department of Cardiothoracic Surgery, Democritus University of Thrace University General Hospital, 68100 Alexandroupolis, Greece.
Cardiovascular disease comprises a group of disorders affecting or originating within tissues and organs of the cardiovascular system; most, if not all, will eventually result in cardiomyocyte dysfunction or death, negatively impacting cardiac function. Effective models of cardiac disease are thus important for understanding crucial aspects of disease progression, while recent advancements in stem cell biology have allowed for the use of stem cell populations to derive such models. These include three-dimensional (3D) models such as stem cell-based models of embryos (SCME) as well as organoids, many of which are frequently derived from embryoid bodies (EB).
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