Engineered
3D
neuromuscular
tissues. (A) Aligned 3D muscle bundles are engineered by mixing myoblasts in an ECM pre-polymer solution of Matrigel, thrombin and fibrinogen, and casting it into a microfabricated support structure, such as a Velcro frame. Scale bars: 50 mm (left image); 50 µm (right image). Adapted from Madden et al. (2015). (B) Compartmentalized fluidic devices have been microfabricated to controllably co-culture 3D muscle bundles and motor neuron spheroids, and generated NMJs after 14 days in culture. D7, day 7; D14, day 14; DAPI, 4′,6-diamidino-2-phenylindole; nAChR, nicotinic acetylcholine receptor; SAA, sarcomeric alpha-actinin; Tuj1, neuron-specific class III β-tubulin. Scale bars: 2 mm (left image); 10 µm (right image). Adapted with permission from Osaki et al. (2018) and Uzel et al. (2016). The images in this figure are not published under the terms of the CC-BY license of this article. For permission to reuse, please see Madden et al. (2015), Osaki et al. (2018) and Uzel et al. (2016).