Research Director: Shoji TAKEUCHI
(Professor, Institute of Industrial Science, the University of Tokyo)
Research Term: Oct 2010 - Mar 2016
Special Extension Period: Apr 2016 - Mar 2017
Grant Number: JPMJER1003

Recent advances in "bottom-up" tissue engineering research make it possible to build-up the tissue with high density and accuracy. However, fabrication of thick structures still has difficulties because it is a time consuming process to stack cell sheets or spheroid one-by-one. Moreover, even if the organization was able to be formed thick, necrosis occurred because nutrient can not reach to the deep area of the thick tissues.

The objective of this project is to establish a rapid technology to fabricate thick, highly-dense, heterogeneous 3D tissue structures using MEMS/Microfluidic technology. We prepare cell-laden micro beads, micro fibers and micro plates as building blocks for the 3D construction; the tissue structures are formed by molding, weaving, and folding of each block.

As the results, we have demonstrated that the 3D tissue structures fabricated by the interdisciplinary approaches are available as grafts for transplantation therapy and drug testing systems without animal experiments. Furthermore, we show their applicability to the creation of new industry including biorobots and biosensors.