A novel fabrication process of up-scalable microfiber-shaped tendon-like tissue with high cell density for uniformed macroscale assembly.

This paper describes up-scalable microfiber-shaped tissues for macroscale tendon tissue reconstruction in vitro. C3H10T1/2 cells were encapsulated in a calcium alginate hydrogel microfiber that was fabricated via a double coaxial microfluidic device. The C3H10T1/2 cells gradually merged to construct the microfiber-shaped tendon-like tissue. Our microfiber-shaped tendon-like tissues were alive and maintained their microfiber-shaped morphology over 600 days. Immunostaining and real-time quantitative polymerase chain reaction analyses showed that our fabricated microfiber-shaped tendon-like tissue properly expressed tenomodulin and the orientation of the filaments of actin, which are one of the characteristics of tendon tissue in vivo. Furthermore, a macroscale tendon tissue assembly with ∼1 cm in length and ∼200 µm in thickness was successfully constructed by bundling the microfiber-shaped tendon-like tissues together. This feature enabled us to fabricate a macroscale tendon tissue with uniform cell distribution. We believe that our fabricated microfiber-shaped tendon-like tissue would be a suitable strategy to reconstruct tendon tissue in vitro for the treatments of tendon-related injuries.