Bioengineered muscles work in a living organism

An international team of researchers from Italy, Israel and the UK, using a new approach of tissue engineering, has created a mature skeletal muscle functioning in the mouse body.

As a starting material, the scientists used a graft from muscle progenitor cells - mesoangioblasts – grown in a matrix from a hydrogel containing polyethylene glycol and fibrinogen. This hydrogel composition promotes cell survival and their differentiation into muscle fibers.

The uniqueness of these cells consisted in genetic modification, thanks to which they expressed placental growth factor, which contributes to the survival and maturation of cells in a living organism by stimulating the growth of blood vessels and nerves.

A few weeks after subcutaneous transplantation of such a graft on the surface of the anterior tibial muscle of the mouse, a fully functional additional muscle consisting of mature unidirectional muscle fibers was formed in the transplantation zone.

When using a graft to replace an almost completely removed anterior tibial muscle, a new muscle almost identical to the removed one was also formed within a few weeks.

So far, attempts to create functional fragments of muscle tissue both outside the body and inside it have not been successful. The muscles created in laboratory conditions, as a rule, died after transplantation into the body due to the lack of blood vessels and nerves necessary to maintain their vital activity.

Researchers believe that in the future, in order to restore irreversibly damaged muscles, it will be possible to implant a hydrogel matrix containing the patient's own cells on the surface of the preserved muscle tissue adjacent to the injury zone. However, they recognize that the animal model they used is very small in size and increasing the scale of the procedure will require significant additional efforts. The next stage of their work will be testing the effectiveness of the new approach on larger animals.

Article by Claudia Fuoco et al. In vivo generation of a mature and functional artificial skeletal muscle is published in the journal EMBO Molecular Medicine.

Evgeniya Ryabtseva
Portal "Eternal youth" http://vechnayamolodost.ru based on the materials of the European Molecular Biology Organization (EMBO):
Scientists use tissue engineering to grow leg muscle. 

27.02.2015