Leveraging Biomaterial Platforms to Study Aging-Related Neural and Muscular Degeneration

Aging is a complex multifactorial process that results in tissue function impairment across the whole organism. One of the common consequences of this process is the loss of muscle mass and the associated decline in muscle function, known as sarcopenia. Aging also presents with an increased risk of developing other pathological conditions such as neurodegeneration. Muscular and neuronal degeneration cause mobility issues and cognitive impairment, hence having a major impact on the quality of life of the older population. The development of novel therapies that can ameliorate the effects of aging is currently hindered by our limited knowledge of the underlying mechanisms and the use of models that fail to recapitulate the structure and composition of the cell microenvironment. The emergence of bioengineering techniques based on the use of biomimetic materials and biofabrication methods has opened the possibility of generating 3D models of muscular and nervous tissues that better mimic the native extracellular matrix. These platforms are particularly advantageous for drug testing and mechanistic studies. In this review, we discuss the developments made in the creation of 3D models of aging-related neuronal and muscular degeneration and we provide a perspective on the future directions for the field.

Spent media analysis suggests cultivated meat media will require species and cell type optimization

Cell culture media design is perhaps the most significant hurdle currently facing the commercialization of cultivated meat as an alternative source of dietary protein. Since media optimization for a specific culture system requires a significant amount of effort and investment, a major question remaining is whether media formulations can be easily shared across multiple production schemes for cells of different species and lineages. Here, we perform spent medium analysis to compare the specific nutrient utilization of primary embryonic chicken muscle precursor cells and fibroblasts to the murine C2C12 myoblast cell line. We demonstrate that these related cell types have significantly different nutrient utilization patterns collectively and on a per-cell basis, and that many components of conventional media do not appear to be depleted by the cells. Namely, glucose was not consumed as rapidly nor as completely by the chicken muscle precursors compared to other cells overall, and there were significant differences in specific consumption rates for several other key nutrients over the first day of culture. Ultimately, our results indicate that no one medium is likely ideal and cost effective to culture multiple cell types and that novel methods to streamline media optimization efforts will be important for the industry to develop.

Xeno-free bioengineered human skeletal muscle tissue using human platelet lysate-based hydrogels

Bioengineered human skeletal muscle tissues have emerged in the last years as new in vitro systems for disease modeling. These bioartificial muscles are classically fabricated by encapsulating human myogenic precursor cells in a hydrogel scaffold that resembles the extracellular matrix. However, most of these hydrogels are derived from xenogenic sources, and the culture media is supplemented with animal serum, which could interfere in drug testing assays. On the contrary, xeno-free biomaterials and culture conditions in tissue engineering offer increased relevance for developing human disease models. In this work, we used human platelet lysate-based nanocomposite hydrogels (HUgel) as scaffolds for human skeletal muscle tissue engineering. These hydrogels consist of human platelet lysate reinforced with cellulose nanocrystals (a-CNC) that allow tunable mechanical, structural, and biochemical properties for the 3D culture of stem cells. Here, we developed hydrogel casting platforms to encapsulate human muscle satellite stem cells in HUgel. The a-CNC content was modulated to enhance matrix remodeling, uniaxial tension, and self-organization of the cells, resulting in the formation of highly aligned, long myotubes expressing sarcomeric proteins. Moreover, the bioengineered human muscles were subjected to electrical stimulation, and the exerted contractile forces were measured in a non-invasive manner. Overall, our results demonstrated that the bioengineered human skeletal muscles could be built in xeno-free cell culture platforms to assess tissue functionality, which is promising for drug development applications.

3D in vitro Models of Pathological Skeletal Muscle: Which Cells and Scaffolds to Elect?

Skeletal muscle is a fundamental tissue of the human body with great plasticity and adaptation to diseases and injuries. Recreating this tissue in vitro helps not only to deepen its functionality, but also to simulate pathophysiological processes. In this review we discuss the generation of human skeletal muscle three-dimensional (3D) models obtained through tissue engineering approaches. First, we present an overview of the most severe myopathies and the two key players involved: the variety of cells composing skeletal muscle tissue and the different components of its extracellular matrix. Then, we discuss the peculiar characteristics among diverse in vitro models with a specific focus on cell sources, scaffold composition and formulations, and fabrication techniques. To conclude, we highlight the efficacy of 3D models in mimicking patient-specific myopathies, deepening muscle disease mechanisms or investigating possible therapeutic effects.

Contractile force assessment methods for in vitro skeletal muscle tissues

Over the last few years, there has been growing interest in measuring the contractile force (CF) of engineered muscle tissues to evaluate their functionality. However, there are still no standards available for selecting the most suitable experimental platform, measuring system, culture protocol, or stimulation patterns. Consequently, the high variability of published data hinders any comparison between different studies. We have identified that cantilever deflection, post deflection, and force transducers are the most commonly used configurations for CF assessment in 2D and 3D models. Additionally, we have discussed the most relevant emerging technologies that would greatly complement CF evaluation with intracellular and localized analysis. This review provides a comprehensive analysis of the most significant advances in CF evaluation and its critical parameters. In order to compare contractile performance across experimental platforms, we have used the specific force (sF, kN/m2), CF normalized to the calculated cross-sectional area (CSA). However, this parameter presents a high variability throughout the different studies, which indicates the need to identify additional parameters and complementary analysis suitable for proper comparison. We propose that future contractility studies in skeletal muscle constructs report detailed information about construct size, contractile area, maturity level, sarcomere length, and, ideally, the tetanus-to-twitch ratio. These studies will hopefully shed light on the relative impact of these variables on muscle force performance of engineered muscle constructs. Prospective advances in muscle tissue engineering, particularly in muscle disease models, will require a joint effort to develop standardized methodologies for assessing CF of engineered muscle tissues.

Screening of anti-atrophic peptides by using photo-cleavable peptide array and 96-well scale contractile human skeletal muscle atrophy models

Skeletal muscle atrophy is characterized by decreases in protein content, myofiber diameter, and contractile force generation. As muscle atrophy worsens the quality of life, the development of anti-atrophic substances is desirable. In this study, we aimed to demonstrate a screening process for anti-atrophic peptides using photo-cleavable peptide array technology and human contractile atrophic muscle models. We developed a 96-well system, and established a screening process with less variability. Dexamethasone-induced human atrophic tissue was constructed on the system. Eight peptides were selected from the literature and used for the screening of peptides for preventing the decrease of the contractile forces of tissues. The peptide QIGFIW, which showed preventive activity, was selected as the seed sequence. As a result of amino acid substitution, we obtained QIGFIQ as a peptide with higher anti-atrophic activity. These results indicate that the combinatorial use of the photo-cleavable peptide array technology and 96-well screening system could comprise a powerful approach to obtaining anti-atrophic peptides, and suggest that the 96-well screening system and atrophic model represent a practical and powerful tool for the development of drugs/functional food ingredients. This article is protected by copyright. All rights reserved.

Principles for the design of multicellular engineered living systems

Remarkable progress in bioengineering over the past two decades has enabled the formulation of fundamental design principles for a variety of medical and non-medical applications. These advancements have laid the foundation for building multicellular engineered living systems (M-CELS) from biological parts, forming functional modules integrated into living machines. These cognizant design principles for living systems encompass novel genetic circuit manipulation, self-assembly, cell-cell/matrix communication, and artificial tissues/organs enabled through systems biology, bioinformatics, computational biology, genetic engineering, and microfluidics. Here, we introduce design principles and a blueprint for forward production of robust and standardized M-CELS, which may undergo variable reiterations through the classic design-build-test-debug cycle. This Review provides practical and theoretical frameworks to forward-design, control, and optimize novel M-CELS. Potential applications include biopharmaceuticals, bioreactor factories, biofuels, environmental bioremediation, cellular computing, biohybrid digital technology, and experimental investigations into mechanisms of multicellular organisms normally hidden inside the "black box" of living cells.

Available In Vitro Models for Human Satellite Cells from Skeletal Muscle

Skeletal muscle accounts for almost 40% of the total adult human body mass. This tissue is essential for structural and mechanical functions such as posture, locomotion, and breathing, and it is endowed with an extraordinary ability to adapt to physiological changes associated with growth and physical exercise, as well as tissue damage. Moreover, skeletal muscle is the most age-sensitive tissue in mammals. Due to aging, but also to several diseases, muscle wasting occurs with a loss of muscle mass and functionality, resulting from disuse atrophy and defective muscle regeneration, associated with dysfunction of satellite cells, which are the cells responsible for maintaining and repairing adult muscle. The most established cell lines commonly used to study muscle homeostasis come from rodents, but there is a need to study skeletal muscle using human models, which, due to ethical implications, consist primarily of in vitro culture, which is the only alternative way to vertebrate model organisms. This review will survey in vitro 2D/3D models of human satellite cells to assess skeletal muscle biology for pre-clinical investigations and future directions.

Bioengineeredin vitro3D model of myotonic dystrophy type 1 human skeletal muscle

Myotonic dystrophy type 1 (DM1) is the most common hereditary myopathy in the adult population. The disease is characterized by progressive skeletal muscle degeneration that produces severe disability. At present, there is still no effective treatment for DM1 patients, but the breakthroughs in understanding the molecular pathogenic mechanisms in DM1 have allowed the testing of new therapeutic strategies. Animal models andin vitrotwo-dimensional cell cultures have been essential for these advances. However, serious concerns exist regarding how faithfully these models reproduce the biological complexity of the disease. Biofabrication tools can be applied to engineer human three-dimensional (3D) culture systems that complement current preclinical research models. Here, we describe the development of the firstin vitro3D model of DM1 human skeletal muscle. Transdifferentiated myoblasts from patient-derived fibroblasts were encapsulated in micromolded gelatin methacryloyl-carboxymethyl cellulose methacrylate hydrogels through photomold patterning on functionalized glass coverslips. These hydrogels present a microstructured topography that promotes myoblasts alignment and differentiation resulting in highly aligned myotubes from both healthy and DM1 cells in a long-lasting cell culture. The DM1 3D microtissues recapitulate the molecular alterations detected in patient biopsies. Importantly, fusion index analyses demonstrate that 3D micropatterning significantly improved DM1 cell differentiation into multinucleated myotubes compared to standard cell cultures. Moreover, the characterization of the 3D cultures of DM1 myotubes detects phenotypes as the reduced thickness of myotubes that can be used for drug testing. Finally, we evaluated the therapeutic effect of antagomiR-23b administration on bioengineered DM1 skeletal muscle microtissues. AntagomiR-23b treatment rescues both molecular DM1 hallmarks and structural phenotype, restoring myotube diameter to healthy control sizes. Overall, these new microtissues represent an improvement over conventional cell culture models and can be used as biomimetic platforms to establish preclinical studies for myotonic dystrophy.

Bioengineered in vitro skeletal muscles as new tools for muscular dystrophies preclinical studies

Muscular dystrophies are a group of highly disabling disorders that share degenerative muscle weakness and wasting as common symptoms. To date, there is not an effective cure for these diseases. In the last years, bioengineered tissues have emerged as powerful tools for preclinical studies. In this review, we summarize the recent technological advances in skeletal muscle tissue engineering. We identify several ground-breaking techniques to fabricate in vitro bioartificial muscles. Accumulating evidence shows that scaffold-based tissue engineering provides topographical cues that enhance the viability and maturation of skeletal muscle. Functional bioartificial muscles have been developed using human myoblasts. These tissues accurately responded to electrical and biological stimulation. Moreover, advanced drug screening tools can be fabricated integrating these tissues in electrical stimulation platforms. However, more work introducing patient-derived cells and integrating these tissues in microdevices is needed to promote the clinical translation of bioengineered skeletal muscle as preclinical tools for muscular dystrophies.

Considerations for the development of cost-effective cell culture media for cultivated meat production

Innovation in cultivated meat development has been rapidly accelerating in recent years because it holds the potential to help attenuate issues facing production of dietary protein for a growing world population. There are technical obstacles still hindering large-scale commercialization of cultivated meat, of which many are related to the media that are used to culture the muscle, fat, and connective tissue cells. While animal cell culture media has been used and refined for roughly a century, it has not been specifically designed with the requirements of cultivated meat in mind. Perhaps the most common industrial use of animal cell culture is currently the production of therapeutic monoclonal antibodies, which sell for orders of magnitude more than meat. Successful production of cultivated meat requires media that is food grade with minimal cost, can regulate large-scale cell proliferation and differentiation, has acceptable sensory qualities, and is animal ingredient-free. Much insight into strategies for achieving media formulations with these qualities can be obtained from knowledge of conventional culture media applications and from the metabolic pathways involved in myogenesis and protein synthesis. In addition, application of principles used to optimize media for large-scale microbial fermentation processes producing lower value commodity chemicals and food ingredients can also be instructive. As such, the present review shall provide an overview of the current understanding of cell culture media as it relates to cultivated meat.

Extracellular Matrix-Derived Hydrogels as Biomaterial for Different Skeletal Muscle Tissue Replacements

Recently, skeletal muscle represents a complex and challenging tissue to be generated in vitro for tissue engineering purposes. Several attempts have been pursued to develop hydrogels with different formulations resembling in vitro the characteristics of skeletal muscle tissue in vivo. This review article describes how different types of cell-laden hydrogels recapitulate the multiple interactions occurring between extracellular matrix (ECM) and muscle cells. A special attention is focused on the biochemical cues that affect myocytes morphology, adhesion, proliferation, and phenotype maintenance, underlining the importance of topographical cues exerted on the hydrogels to guide cellular orientation and facilitate myogenic differentiation and maturation. Moreover, we highlight the crucial role of 3D printing and bioreactors as useful platforms to finely control spatial deposition of cells into ECM based hydrogels and provide the skeletal muscle native-like tissue microenvironment, respectively.

Engineered skeletal muscles for disease modeling and drug discovery

Skeletal muscle is the largest organ of human body with several important roles in everyday movement and metabolic homeostasis. The limited ability of small animal models of muscle disease to accurately predict drug efficacy and toxicity in humans has prompted the development in vitro models of human skeletal muscle that fatefully recapitulate cell and tissue level functions and drug responses. We first review methods for development of three-dimensional engineered muscle tissues and organ-on-a-chip microphysiological systems and discuss their potential utility in drug discovery research and development of new regenerative therapies. Furthermore, we describe strategies to increase the functional maturation of engineered muscle, and motivate the importance of incorporating multiple tissue types on the same chip to model organ cross-talk and generate more predictive drug development platforms. Finally, we review the ability of available in vitro systems to model diseases such as type II diabetes, Duchenne muscular dystrophy, Pompe disease, and dysferlinopathy.

Electrical stimulation increases hypertrophy and metabolic flux in tissue-engineered human skeletal muscle

In vitro models of contractile human skeletal muscle hold promise for use in disease modeling and drug development, but exhibit immature properties compared to native adult muscle. To address this limitation, 3D tissue-engineered human muscles (myobundles) were electrically stimulated using intermittent stimulation regimes at 1 Hz and 10 Hz. Dystrophin in myotubes exhibited mature membrane localization suggesting a relatively advanced starting developmental maturation. One-week stimulation significantly increased myobundle size, sarcomeric protein abundance, calcium transient amplitude (∼2-fold), and tetanic force (∼3-fold) resulting in the highest specific force generation (19.3mN/mm2) reported for engineered human muscles to date. Compared to 1 Hz electrical stimulation, the 10 Hz stimulation protocol resulted in greater myotube hypertrophy and upregulated mTORC1 and ERK1/2 activity. Electrically stimulated myobundles also showed a decrease in fatigue resistance compared to control myobundles without changes in glycolytic or mitochondrial protein levels. Greater glucose consumption and decreased abundance of acetylcarnitine in stimulated myobundles indicated increased glycolytic and fatty acid metabolic flux. Moreover, electrical stimulation of myobundles resulted in a metabolic shift towards longer-chain fatty acid oxidation as evident from increased abundances of medium- and long-chain acylcarnitines. Taken together, our study provides an advanced in vitro model of human skeletal muscle with improved structure, function, maturation, and metabolic flux.

Development and application of human skeletal muscle microphysiological systems

A number of major disease states involve skeletal muscle, including type 2 diabetes, muscular dystrophy, sarcopenia and cachexia arising from cancer or heart disease. Animals do not accurately represent many of these disease states. Human skeletal muscle microphysiological systems derived from primary or induced pluripotent stem cells (hPSCs) can provide an in vitro model of genetic and chronic diseases and assess individual variations. Three-dimensional culture systems more accurately represent skeletal muscle function than do two-dimensional cultures. While muscle biopsies enable culture of primary muscle cells, hPSCs provide the opportunity to sample a wider population of donors. Recent advances to promote maturation of PSC-derived skeletal muscle provide an alternative to primary cells. While contractile function is often measured in three-dimensional cultures and several systems exist to characterize contraction of small numbers of muscle fibers, there is a need for functional measures of metabolism suited for microphysiological systems. Future research should address generation of well-differentiated hPSC-derived muscle cells, enabling muscle repair in vitro, and improved disease models.

A system to monitor statin-induced myopathy in individual engineered skeletal muscle myobundles

Microphysiological tissue engineering models of human skeletal muscle (myobundles) provide a platform to investigate the mechanism of muscle diseases and to study the response to drugs and toxins in vitro. To examine the dynamic response to drugs, which often take several days to induce responses, we developed a system to monitor the contractile force of the same human skeletal muscle myobundles over time before and after treatment with drugs. Myobundles were formed in series with Ecoflex films (platinum-catalyzed silicones) with embedded microbeads. The displacement of the microbeads in Ecoflex exhibited a linear relation between muscle force production and Ecoflex film stretch. Forces measured with the microbeads embedded in Ecoflex agreed well with simultaneous measurements with a force transducer. Application of the Hill model for the myobundles showed that the Ecoflex affected the magnitude of the response, but not the kinetics. After continuous exposure to 100 nM cerivastatin, both active and passive forces were reduced relative to controls after 2-4 days. The decline in force was associated with a decline in the muscle myofiber organization. The inhibitory effect of cerivastatin was reduced when 0.1-1 mM mevalonate was added with cerivastatin. Although addition of co-enzyme Q10 with cerivastatin inhibited degradation of sarcomeric α-actinin (SAA) in myoblasts, the contractile force still declined, suggesting that statin-induced myopathy was related to mevalonate pathway but the addition of co-enzyme Q10 was insufficient to overcome the effect of statins on the mevalonate pathway. Thus, cerivastatin rapidly induces myopathy which can be reversds with mevalonate but not co-enzyme Q10.

Composite Biomaterials as Long-Lasting Scaffolds for 3D Bioprinting of Highly Aligned Muscle Tissue

New biocompatible materials have enabled the direct 3D printing of complex functional living tissues, such as skeletal and cardiac muscle. Gelatinmethacryloyl (GelMA) is a photopolymerizable hydrogel composed of natural gelatin functionalized with methacrylic anhydride. However, it is difficult to obtain a single hydrogel that meets all the desirable properties for tissue engineering. In particular, GelMA hydrogels lack versatility in their mechanical properties and lasting 3D structures. In this work, a library of composite biomaterials to obtain versatile, lasting, and mechanically tunable scaffolds are presented. Two polysaccharides, alginate and carboxymethyl cellulose chemically functionalized with methacrylic anhydride, and a synthetic material, such as poly(ethylene glycol) diacrylate are combined with GelMA to obtain photopolymerizable hydrogel blends. Physical properties of the obtained composite hydrogels are screened and optimized for the growth and development of skeletal muscle fibers from C2C12 murine cells, and compared with pristine GelMA. All these composites show high resistance to degradation maintaining the 3D structure with high fidelity over several weeks. Altogether, in this study a library of biocompatible novel and totally versatile composite biomaterials are developed and characterized, with tunable mechanical properties that give structure and support myotube formation and alignment.

In Vitro Tissue-Engineered Skeletal Muscle Models for Studying Muscle Physiology and Disease

Healthy skeletal muscle possesses the extraordinary ability to regenerate in response to small-scale injuries; however, this self-repair capacity becomes overwhelmed with aging, genetic myopathies, and large muscle loss. The failure of small animal models to accurately replicate human muscle disease, injury and to predict clinically-relevant drug responses has driven the development of high fidelity in vitro skeletal muscle models. Herein, the progress made and challenges ahead in engineering biomimetic human skeletal muscle tissues that can recapitulate muscle development, genetic diseases, regeneration, and drug response is discussed. Bioengineering approaches used to improve engineered muscle structure and function as well as the functionality of satellite cells to allow modeling muscle regeneration in vitro are also highlighted. Next, a historical overview on the generation of skeletal muscle cells and tissues from human pluripotent stem cells, and a discussion on the potential of these approaches to model and treat genetic diseases such as Duchenne muscular dystrophy, is provided. Finally, the need to integrate multiorgan microphysiological systems to generate improved drug discovery technologies with the potential to complement or supersede current preclinical animal models of muscle disease is described.

An Assessment of Myotube Morphology, Matrix Deformation, and Myogenic mRNA Expression in Custom-Built and Commercially Available Engineered Muscle Chamber Configurations

There are several three-dimensional (3D) skeletal muscle (SkM) tissue engineered models reported in the literature. 3D SkM tissue engineering (TE) aims to recapitulate the structure and function of native (in vivo) tissue, within an in vitro environment. This requires the differentiation of myoblasts into aligned multinucleated myotubes surrounded by a biologically representative extracellular matrix (ECM). In the present work, a new commercially available 3D SkM TE culture chamber manufactured from polyether ether ketone (PEEK) that facilitates suitable development of these myotubes is presented. To assess the outcomes of the myotubes within these constructs, morphological, gene expression, and ECM remodeling parameters were compared against a previously published custom-built model. No significant differences were observed in the morphological and gene expression measures between the newly introduced and the established construct configuration, suggesting biological reproducibility irrespective of manufacturing process. However, TE SkM fabricated using the commercially available PEEK chambers displayed reduced variability in both construct attachment and matrix deformation, likely due to increased reproducibility within the manufacturing process. The mechanical differences between systems may also have contributed to such differences, however, investigation of these variables was beyond the scope of the investigation. Though more expensive than the custom-built models, these PEEK chambers are also suitable for multiple use after autoclaving. As such this would support its use over the previously published handmade culture chamber system, particularly when seeking to develop higher-throughput systems or when experimental cost is not a factor.