Alignment of Skeletal Muscle Myoblasts and Myotubes Using Linear Micropatterned Surfaces Ground With Abrasives

Alignment of cells plays a significant key role in skeletal muscle tissue engineering because skeletal muscle tissue in vivo has a highly organized structure consisting of long parallel multinucleated myotubes formed through differentiation and fusion of myoblasts. In the present study, we developed an easy, simple, and low-cost method for aligning skeletal muscle cells by Using surfaces with linear microscale features fabricated by grinding. Iron blocks were ground in one direction with three kinds of abrasives (9 mu m diamond suspension, #400 sandpaper, and #150 sandpaper) and then used as molds to make micropatterned polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS) substrates (type 1, type 11, and type 111). Observation of the Surface topography revealed that the PDMS substrates exhibited different degree of mean roughness (Ra), 0.03 mu m for type 1, 0.16 mu m for type 11, and 0.56 mu m for type 111, respectively. Murine skeletal muscle cell fine C2C12 myoblasts were cultured and differentiated on the patterned PDMS substrates, and it was examined whether the alignment of C2C12 myoblasts and myotubes was possible. Although the cell growth and differentiation on the three types of patterned substrates were similar to those on the flat PDMS substrate as a control, the alignment of both C2C12 myoblasts and myotubes was obviously observed on types 11 and 111, but not on type I or the control substrate. These results indicate that surfaces ground with abrasives will be useful for fabricating aligned skeletal muscle tissues. Biotechnol. Bioeng. 2009;103: 631-638. (C) 2009 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.