Engineer Muscle Fibers In Vito example essay topic

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, my oblasts respond to muscle injury by rapidly proliferating and then differentiating, which results in the fusion of neighboring my oblasts into myo fibers. Myoblasts can be easily cultured in vito and are capable of forming muscle. Since my oblasts 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, clinicians can produce the needed muscle and implant it as required at the site of dysfunction.

The potential of such techniques would warrant the raising of such questions as to why such practices are not occurring regularly and why people today are still suffering from various muscle disorders. The unfortunate truth remains that engineering muscle with structural capabilities as natural muscle is still quite challenging. In viv o, muscle consists of bundles of myo tube muscle fibers, which are fused multi-nucleated cells, and these muscle fibers contract synchronously. However, when my oblasts are grown in Petri dishes in vito, they grow and differentiate into multi-nucleated myo fibers in random alignment, which do not resemble natural muscle structure. Fortunately, recent research has lent forth a couple methods in an attempt to overcome these structural impairments. One of such potential methods is to regulate cell alignment by micro patterning techniques such as and micro molding patterning.

Microfluidic patterning makes use of a silicone wafer etched by photo resist to create channels of specific widths. An inverse pattern to the wafer can be prepared using an elastic material known as poly di methyl siloxane (PDMS), which can then be placed onto a glass substrate, through which a polymer solution can be introduced. Once the polymer solution is allowed to evaporate, the PDMS stamp can be removed, leaving polymer channels formed on the glass surface. Similar to patterning, micro molding uses the PDMS stamp as a mold for the polymer solution, which when dried, forms a thin film with patterned grooves. Micropatterning has been used to effectively pattern my oblasts on silica surfaces, but myo tube formation on micro patterned biodegradable polymer films has yet to be investigated. Therefore, the purpose of the project is to engineer muscle fibers in vito, which can be applied for therapeutic implantation.

By culturing my oblasts on patterned and non-patterned biodegradable substrates, it is possible that the patterned substrate will enhance cell alignment and differentiation into myo fibers. Restricting cell alignment would increase the probability of physical interaction, which would enhance the formation of myo tubes and direct their alignment towards forming parallel myo fibers. These parallel myo fibers would more closely resemble natural muscle, which consist of many muscle fibers in parallel. Although his could be carried out on both glass as well as biodegradable PLCG polymer films, the polymer substrate would be more clinically beneficial. The use of micro patterned muscle fibers on biodegradable and bio compatible PLCG films for therapeutic implantation is promising.

Bibliography

Acar turk TO, Peel, Peel MM, Petros ko P, La Framboise W, Johnson PC, Di Milla PA. (1999) Control of attachment, morphology, and proliferation of skeletal my oblasts on glass.
J Biomed Mater Res 44: 355-370. A tala A, Lanza RP (Eds). (2002) Methods of Tissue Engineering.
London: Academic Press Choi SH, Park TG. Synthesis and characterization of elastic PLGA / PCL/PLGA tri-block copolymers. (2002) J Bio mater Sci Polym Ed 13: 1163-73.
Evans DR, Brit land S, Wigmore PM. (1999) Differential response of fetal and neonatal my oblasts to topographical guidance cues in vito.
Dev Genes Evol 209: 438-442. Jain RA. The manufacturing techniques of various drug loaded biodegradable poly (lac tide-co-glycol ide) (PLGA) devices. (2000) Biomaterials 21: 2475-90.
O'Brien BM, Morrison WA, Gurley GJ. (1990) Principles and techniques of micro vascular surgery.
In: McCarthy JG, editor. Plastic Surgery. Philadelphia, PA: W.B. Saunders. Shultz E, Gibson MC, Champion T. (1978) Satellite cells are mitotically quiescent in mature mouse muscle: An EM and radio autographic study.
J Exp Zool 206: 451-456. Thakur RG, Ho F, Huang NF, Lippmann D, Li S. (2003) Regulation of vascular smooth muscle cells by micro patterning.
Biochem Biophys Res Commun. 307: 883-90. Young B, Heath JW. (2000) Wheater's Functional Histology.