In Situ Magnetic Alignment and Cross-Linking of Injectable
Microparticles into Centimeter-Scale Fibers for Efficient Myoblast
Alignment and in Vivo Fiber Formation
posted on 2019-06-21, 00:00authored bySeung
Woo Choi, Youngjin Choi, Jaeyun Kim
Muscle cell alignment
plays an essential key role in the development
of parallelly organized myotubes and the exertion of mechanical functions.
Despite remarkable advances in cell alignment, there is still a need
for a simpler and more efficient method of stably aligning and supporting
cells. Here, we propose magnetic assembly of alginate-coated magnetic
microparticles for myoblast alignment. Applying an external magnetic
field in a controlled manner followed by ionic cross-linking of adjacent
alginate chains led to the formation of stable linear alignment of
particles in centimeter-scale even after the removal of the magnetic
field. Based on this anisotropic alignment of bundles consisting of
magnetic particles with further modification of alginate with arginine–glycine–aspartic
acid, myoblast alignment was successfully demonstrated in vitro. Moreover,
these particles can be simply injected through a needle without extra
surgery and magnetically assembled to maintain the aligned structure
in vivo. This injectable material platform can provide a facile method
to supply structural directionality to the cells being regenerated,
especially myoblasts for muscular tissues in clinical muscle loss
or injury.