Title:
Biofunctional hydrogels for skeletal muscle constructs

dc.contributor.advisor García, Andrés J.
dc.contributor.author Salimath, Apoorva Sangam
dc.contributor.committeeMember Botchwey, Edward
dc.contributor.committeeMember Temenoff, Johnna
dc.contributor.committeeMember Burkholder, Thomas
dc.contributor.committeeMember Barker, Thomas
dc.contributor.department Mechanical Engineering
dc.date.accessioned 2017-01-11T14:00:49Z
dc.date.available 2017-01-11T14:00:49Z
dc.date.created 2015-12
dc.date.issued 2015-11-16
dc.date.submitted December 2015
dc.date.updated 2017-01-11T14:00:50Z
dc.description.abstract Skeletal muscle tissue damage costs the US government hundreds of billions of dollars annually. Meanwhile, there is great potential to use skeletal muscle as a scalable actuator system, covering wide length scales, frequencies, and force regimes. Hence, the interest in soft robotics and regenerative medicine methods to engineer skeletal muscle has increased in recent years. The challenges to generate a functional muscle strip are typical to those of tissue engineering, where common issues such as cell source, material scaffold, bioreactor method or configuration play key roles. Specifically, it is important to translate the existing body of myogenesis knowledge into engineering muscle constructs by examining the impact of the cell microenvironment on growth, alignment, fusion, and differentiation of skeletal muscle cells. The main motivation behind this thesis was to generate a contractile 3D skeletal muscle construct utilizing organized biochemical and physical cues to guide muscle cell differentiation and maturation. Such a construct is expected to play an important role in medical applications and the development of soft robotics. To do this, 3D, swollen hydrogels were chosen to provide tailorable platforms that support cellular activities to similar extents as native matrices. For this work, we utilized an engineered bio-functionalized poly(ethylene glycol)-(PEG)-hydrogel with maleimide (MAL) cross-linking reaction chemistry that gels rapidly with high reaction efficiency under cytocompatible reaction conditions. PEG alone has been shown to have low protein adsorption, a minimal inflammatory profile, well established chemistry, and a long history of safety in vivo. The PEG-MAL system in particular allows “plug-and-play” design variation, control over polymerization time, and small degradation products. To develop an effective soft biomaterial for the development of an aligned, functional muscle construct, we (i) screened hydrogel properties for differentiation, (ii) recreated alignment of skeletal muscle cells, (iii) determined effective generated force upon action of an external agonist. The impact of this study in generating a controllable force actuator will be significant in the construction of biological machines. Concomitantly, this study will provide a unique regenerative solution for skeletal muscle tissue repair and regeneration.
dc.description.degree Ph.D.
dc.format.mimetype application/pdf
dc.identifier.uri http://hdl.handle.net/1853/56221
dc.language.iso en_US
dc.publisher Georgia Institute of Technology
dc.subject Skeletal muscle
dc.subject Hydrogel
dc.subject PEG-MAL
dc.subject Tissue engineering
dc.title Biofunctional hydrogels for skeletal muscle constructs
dc.type Text
dc.type.genre Dissertation
dspace.entity.type Publication
local.contributor.advisor García, Andrés J.
local.contributor.corporatename George W. Woodruff School of Mechanical Engineering
local.contributor.corporatename College of Engineering
relation.isAdvisorOfPublication 6236e450-228b-4532-8b5e-812316ac90f3
relation.isOrgUnitOfPublication c01ff908-c25f-439b-bf10-a074ed886bb7
relation.isOrgUnitOfPublication 7c022d60-21d5-497c-b552-95e489a06569
thesis.degree.level Doctoral
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