Skeletal muscle is an electrically and mechanically active tissue that contains highly oriented, densely packed myofibrils. The tissue has self-regeneration capacity upon injury, which is limited in the cases of volumetric muscle loss. Several regenerative therapies have been developed in order to enhance this capacity, as well as to structurally and mechanically support the defect site during regeneration. Among them, biomimetic approaches that recapitulate the native microenvironment of the tissue in terms of parallel-aligned structure and biophysical signals were shown to be effective. In this study, we have developed 3D printed aligned and electrically active scaffolds in which the electrical…
A key challenge towards engineering 3D printed soft tissues is the availability of proper scaffolding materials with enough load carrying capacity. In this study, we synthesized biocompatible and biodegradable, elastomeric polyurethaneureas (TPUU) and investigated the applicability of these novel materials as 3D printed load carrying constructs.