Engineering muscle constructs for the creation of functional engineered musculoskeletal tissue

Area of Science:

• Regenerative Medicine
• Biomaterials Science
• Skeletal Muscle Tissue Engineering

Background:

• Volumetric muscle loss (VML) presents a significant clinical challenge due to suboptimal current treatments.
• Tissue engineering strategies show potential for in vitro skeletal muscle regeneration.
• Existing methods face limitations in biocompatibility and scalability for VML treatment.

Purpose of the Study:

• To review current limitations in tissue engineering for VML repair.
• To explore recent advances in biocompatible and scalable muscle construct development.
• To identify potential solutions for clinically relevant VML injuries.

Main Methods:

• Review of current tissue engineering strategies for skeletal muscle.
• Analysis of biocompatibility requirements for engineered muscle tissue.
• Evaluation of methods for scaling engineered muscle constructs to clinically relevant sizes.

Main Results:

• Engineered muscle tissue requires biocompatibility to prevent immune responses and promote regrowth.
• Current tissue engineering approaches struggle to produce constructs of clinically relevant size (centimeters).
• No current strategy effectively provides both biocompatibility and sufficient scale for VML repair.

Conclusions:

• Recent advances in synthetic scaffolds, native scaffolds, and scaffold-free approaches offer potential solutions.
• Further development is needed to overcome biocompatibility and scalability challenges in VML tissue engineering.
• These emerging strategies may enable future clinical repair of volumetric muscle loss injuries.