Hybrid spheroid microscaffolds as modular tissue units to build macro-tissue assemblies for tissue engineering

Since its inception, tissue engineering and regenerative medicine (TERM) has been relying on either scaffold-based or scaffold-free strategies. Recent reports outlined the possibility of a synergistic, convergence approach, referred to as the third TERM strategy, which could alleviate bottlenecks of the two previous options. This strategy requires the fabrication of highly porous microscaffolds, allowing to create single spheroids within each of them. The resulting tissue units can then be combined and used as modular building blocks for creating tissue constructs through a bottom-up self-assembly. Such strategy can have a significant impact for the future of TERM, but so far, no reports have assessed its feasibility in detail. This work reports a first systematic study, which includes a comparison of the in vitro behavior of tissue units based on adipose derived stem cell spheroids cultured within microscaffolds versus conventional spheroids. We first proved that the presence of the microscaffold neither impairs the cells 'ability to form spheroids nor impacts their viability. Importantly, the fusiogenic and the differentiation potential (i.e. chondrogenesis and osteogenesis), which are important features for cellularized building blocks to be used in TERM, are preserved when spheroids are cultured within microscaffolds. Significant benefits of microscaffold-based tissue units include the enhanced cell retention, the decreased compaction and the better control over the size observed when larger tissue constructs are formed through self-assembly. The proof of concept study presented here demonstrates the great potential offered by those microsize tissue units to be used as building blocks for directed tissue self-assembly. STATEMENT OF SIGNIFICANCE: One of the most exciting and recent advances in tissue engineering and regenerative medicine (TERM) is to combine together multiple micro-size cellularized units, which are able to self-assemble altogether to recreate larger tissue constructs. In this work, we produce such modules by forming single spheroids within highly porous microscaffolds, and study how this new microenvironment impacts on the spheroid's behavior and stemness potential. This work highlights as well that such novel route is enabled by two-photon polymerization, which is an additive manufacturing technique offering high spatial resolution down to 100 nm. These findings provide a first scientific evidence about the utilization of hybrid spheroid microscaffold-based tissue units with great perspective as a modular tool for TERM.