# 3D printed muscle-bone organ implant for treating large injuries

> **NIH NIH R01** · TERASAKI INSTITUTE FOR BIOMEDICAL INNOVATION · 2021 · $414,418

## Abstract

PROJECT SUMMARY
In the United States, musculoskeletal diseases such as extremity injuries, burns, and tumors are a leading cause
of disabilities and death, affecting one in two individuals. However, until now, there has been no effective implant
that can replace the structure and function of damaged bone and muscle tissues, likely due to the difficulty of
regulating the sophisticated heterogeneous bone-muscle junction structure. As a result, muscle damage has
been largely ignored during musculoskeletal surgeries, which often results in disconnected tissues and fibrous
tissue formation, leading to temporal or permanent musculoskeletal disability. In fact, in the human
musculoskeletal system, there exists a direct attachment between bone and muscle tissues at a wide area of
bone, forming a “bone-muscle unit.” Based on this structural closeness, the growth and development of bone
and muscle are tightly coupled through growth factor signaling and cellular cross-talk. Therefore, damage to
either bone or muscle can deteriorate health and function of the other tissue type. For this reason, there has
been a strong need for developing an innovative musculoskeletal implant, which can integrate the distinguished
physicochemical properties of hard tissue and soft tissue in a spatially controlled manner.
To address this problem, we aim to design and build the first 3D printed muscle-bone implant, by utilizing state-
of-the-art 3D multimaterial bioprinting that can extrude multiple types of tissue mimetic bioinks in a simultaneous
and continuous manner. We will control the physicochemical properties of bioinks, such as viscosity and porosity,
to provide an optimized artificial niche for the growth and differentiation of each cell type. We will also include
biodegradable drug carriers to supply musculogenic and osteogenic growth factors with controlled release kinetic
behavior, to aid tissue recovery. In addition, we will regulate the parameters for bioprinting, such as pneumatic
pressure, and the injection and photocrosslinking conditions to build a 3D structure. We will then mature the 3D
printed muscle-bone organ implant in a customized bioreactor system by applying compression and relaxation
cycles that mimic musculoskeletal movement in vivo. Finally, we will evaluate the musculoskeletal regeneration
capacity of our 3D printed muscle-bone implant in a mouse volumetric muscle loss and bone defect model. This
research will present the first 3D print muscle-bone tissues with continuous structures ex vivo that can provide a
groundbreaking clinical solution for curing severe musculoskeletal injuries and preventing disabilities in the clinic.
We further expect that our 3D printed muscle-bone tissue platform will be beneficial for understanding
developmental principles and pathological mechanisms of the musculoskeletal system.

## Key facts

- **NIH application ID:** 10305697
- **Project number:** 5R01AR073135-05
- **Recipient organization:** TERASAKI INSTITUTE FOR BIOMEDICAL INNOVATION
- **Principal Investigator:** Mehmet Remzi Dokmeci
- **Activity code:** R01 (R01, R21, SBIR, etc.)
- **Funding institute:** NIH
- **Fiscal year:** 2021
- **Award amount:** $414,418
- **Award type:** 5
- **Project period:** 2020-11-19 → 2023-03-31

## Primary source

NIH RePORTER: https://reporter.nih.gov/project-details/10305697

## Citation

> US National Institutes of Health, RePORTER application 10305697, 3D printed muscle-bone organ implant for treating large injuries (5R01AR073135-05). Retrieved via AI Analytics 2026-05-23 from https://api.ai-analytics.org/grant/nih/10305697. Licensed CC0.

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