Engineering of Human Skeletal Muscle in Vitro

1. Bioengineering human skeletal
muscle models: Recent advances,
current challenges and future
perspectives
Presented by
Azeem Udin Arshad
Ghulam Mohi-ud-Din
Gohar Ayub

2. Abstract
 Engineering Human skeletal muscle tissue help to developing
therapeutic strategies for muscle injuries, and to evaluate
medicine for in vitro neuromuscular and musculoskeletal studies.
 Several myogenic and non-myogenic cell types can be isolated,
generated, and combined with biomaterials
 Novel bio-fabrication strategies include exogenous stimuli to
enhance tissue maturation and achieve an ever-increasing degree
of tissue functionalisation both in vivo and in vitro
 Emerging technologies such as 3D bioprinting, organ-on-chip and
organoids

3. Skeletal Muscle Unit & Function
Key transcription factors required for
myogenesis are :
 Pax3 and Pax7
 Downstream of the Pax genes
 Myogenic factor 5 (Myf5)
 myogenic regulatory factor 4 (Mrf4)
 myogenic differentiation 1 (MyoD)

4. Tissue engineering
triad: multilineage
cellular
components,
biomaterial
scaffolds and
exogenous stimuli
(regulators) to
recreate functional,
biomimetic human
skeletal muscle
tissues.

5. Skeletal muscle has regenerative potential
divided into four phases:
 1. Tissue injury
 2. Inflammatory response
 3. Activation, proliferation and differentiation of
MuSCs
 4. Maturation and remodelling of the newly formed
tissue

6. Cell Sources for Human Skeletal Muscle
Tissue Engineering
1. Satellite cells and myoblasts
2. Skeletal muscle derived-pericytes and
mesoangioblasts
3. Human induced pluripotent stem cell-derived
myogenic cells
4. Trans-differentiation

7. Biomaterials for human skeletal
muscle tissue engineering
1. Natural polymers
2. Synthetic polymers
3. Composite scaffolds

8. In vitro or in vivo human cell-based skeletal muscle tissue engineering

10.  Combining cells, polymers, scaffolds and
exogenous stimuli
 Current challenges, emerging technologies and
future perspectives

11. Concluding Remarks
 Promising strategies include exploiting the
proliferation and differentiation capacity of iPSCs to
obtain isogenic, 3D bioprinting to control and mimic
the complex skeletal muscle architecture and organ-
on-chip platforms to resemble physiology in vitro.
 These technologies promise to tackle key limitations
of current platforms such as scaling up for tissue
replacement in vivo which will dramatically reduce
the use of animals to study pathogenesis and develop
therapies for neuromuscular and musculoskeletal
disorders.

12. THANK YOU