Bioprinted optoelectronically active cardiac tissues
Faheem Ershad, Zhoulyu Rao, Sushila Maharjan, Fernanda Mesquita, Junkyu Ha, Lei Gonzalez, Tahir Haideri, Ernesto Curty da Costa, Angel Moctezuma-Ramirez, Yuqi Wang, Seonmin Jang, Yuntao Lu, Shubham Patel, Xiaoyang Wang, Yifan Tao, Joshua Weygant, Carlos Ezio Garciamendez‐Mijares, Luis Carlos Orrantia Clark, Muhammad Zubair, Xiaojun Lian, Abdelmotagaly Elgalad, Jian Yang, Camila Hochman‐Mendez, Yu Shrike Zhang, Cunjiang Yu
Abstract
Electrical stimulation of existing three-dimensional bioprinted tissues to alter tissue activities is typically associated with wired delivery, invasive electrode placement, and potential cell damage, minimizing its efficacy in cardiac modulation. Here, we report an optoelectronically active scaffold based on printed gelatin methacryloyl embedded with micro-solar cells, seeded with cardiomyocytes to form light-stimulable tissues. This enables untethered, noninvasive, and damage-free optoelectronic stimulation-induced modulation of cardiac beating behaviors without needing wires or genetic modifications to the tissue solely with light. Pulsed light stimulation of human cardiomyocytes showed that the optoelectronically active scaffold could increase their beating rates (>40%), maintain high cell viability under light stimulation (>96%), and negligibly affect the electrocardiogram morphology. The seeded scaffolds, termed optoelectronically active tissues, were able to successfully accelerate heart beating in vivo in rats. Our work demonstrates a viable wireless, printable, and optically controllable tissue, suggesting a transformative step in future therapy of electrically active tissues/organs.