Cyclic mechanical stimulation favors myosin heavy chain accumulation in engineered skeletal muscle constructs

Since stretching plays a key role in skeletal muscle tissue development in vivo, by making use of an innovative bioreactor and a biodegradable microfibrous scaffold (DegraPol(R)) previously developed by our group, we aimed to investigate the effect of mechanical conditioning on the development of skeletal muscle engineered constructs, obtained by seeding and culturing murine skeletal muscle cells on electrospun membranes.

Following 5 days of static culture, skeletal muscle constructs were transferred into the bioreactor and further cultured for 13 days, while experiencing a stretching pattern adapted from the literature to resemble mouse development and growth. Sample withdrawal occurred at the onset of cyclic stretching and after 7 and 10 days. Myosin heavy chain (MHC) accumulation in stretched constructs (D) was evaluated by Western blot analysis and immunofluorescence staining, using statically cultured samples (S) as controls.

Western blot analysis of MHC on dynamically (D) and statically (S) cultured constructs at different time points showed that, at day 10, the applied stretching pattern led to an eight-fold increase in myosin accumulation in cyclically stretched constructs (D) with respect to the corresponding static controls (S). These results were confirmed by immunofluorescence staining of total sarcomeric MHC.

Since previous attempts to reproduce skeletal myogenesis in vitro mainly suffered from the difficulty of driving myoblast development into an architecturally organized array of myosin expressing myotubes, the chance of inducing MHC accumulation via mechanical conditioning represents a significant step towards the generation of a functional muscle construct for skeletal muscle tissue engineering applications.