Helical nanofiber yarn enabling highly stretchable engineered microtissue

Abstract

Significance The challenge in manufacturing stretchable and tough reconstituted tissues lies in the limitation of current approaches to recapitulate the exceptional mechanical properties of native tissues while maintaining cellular functions. Here, we simulate native mechanical complexity by integrating electrospinning and tissue engineering to develop a highly stretchable living tissue consisting of bioinspired hierarchical helical scaffold and seeded cells. The well-organized tissue construct has a toughness of 57 GJ m −3 and can be stretched up to 15 times its length while sheltering cells from severe cyclic strains (600%), owing to nonaffine fiber deformation. With the additional ability to promote myogenesis, this hierarchical microtissue designed by leveraging mechanical concepts may be used for applications in tissue engineering, regenerative medicine, and artificial living systems.