Assembly and Monitoring of Modular Tissue Structure of Micro-Fibers

This paper introduces a novel 3D assembly method for mimicking aligned fiber-structure like human skeletal muscle tissue (Fig. 1), and a monitoring system for it. The innovative point is that an artificial single modular micro-fiber comprises magnetic parts in both ends. The magnetic force and capillary force are used to achieve the non-contact manipulation, alignment and assembly of the micro-fibers (Fig. 2). Several different kinds of fibers are fabricated and assembled as a module of the tissue structure. In this paper, the sensor fiber and muscle fiber are used for demonstration of the proof of concept. After the assembly, the micro-fibers were successfully fused to form a tissue structure with highly arranged cells inside. Finally, the tissue would be cultured in the system for realtime monitoring of the internal state. This system has functions consisting of microscope observation, force measuring, fluorescent observation and constant CO2 and temperature control.