Tissue Engineering Muscle by Micropatterning for Therapeutic Transplant

Tissue Engineering Muscle by Micropatterning for Therapeutic Transplantation There is growing interest to treat patients with inherited or acquired muscular disorders by transplantation of cells to the site of dysfunction to restore normal function. One candidate cell source is skeletal muscle, which can be harvested from surrounding tissues for cell culture before injecting into the site of dysfunction. However, this treatment may not be practical because harvesting skeletal muscle may lead to significant muscle loss and increased susceptibility to infection. One effective way to develop the needed tissue is through tissue engineering. Tissue engineering is the development of molecules, cells, tissues, or organs to replace or support dysfunctional body parts. Myoblasts, which are muscle precursor cells, a form on stem cells found in muscle, are a promising cell source for tissue engineering because they play an active role in regenerating muscle due to injury. Normally quiescent, myoblasts respond to muscle injury by rapidly proliferating and then differentiating, which results in the fusion of neighboring myoblasts into myofibers. Myoblasts can be easily cultured in vitro and are capable of forming muscle. Since myoblasts have the potential to differentiate into muscle fibers, they show tremendous promise for developing muscle tissue that can be used to for cell transplantation and tissue engineering. By creating an effective means of engineering muscle tissue, clinici...