Skeletal muscle is essential for many daily functions within the human body including moving and breathing. Unfortunately, disease can compromise these functions causing difficulty in everyday life. Our research aims to develop models of muscle disease using stem cells which accurately represent human biology so we can better understand muscle pathology and identify drugs to improve quality of life.
Impact
Our aim is to generate a representative 3D model of muscle disease using stem cells. The nature of stem cells to grow continuously ensures our cell pool will not be exhausted and also provides opportunity for personalised medicine including utilisng patient’s own cells in experiments. This gives us the best chance at identifying potential therapeutics improving quality of life for those affected by muscle disease.
reNEW research
Currently, our lab can generate muscle cells from stem cells which further fuse to form muscle fibres in both 2D and 3D platforms. Our 2D fibres have been used in experiments investigating inflammation and muscle disease such as FSHD. Our 3D “micro-muscles” are physiologically relevant and provide a functional measure of force output allowing us to understand not only what our muscles look like but also how they might behave.
Image description
Close up of a stem cell-derived skeletal muscle tissue. If you look closely, stripes or “striations” can be seen in red, illustrating the “spring-like” construct that is titin- a protein enabling muscle contraction and relaxation.
Credits
Kaitlyn Bibby, Research Assistant, Muscle Bioengineering Lab, MCRI.
