Engineered Muscle
Laboratory-engineered skeletal muscle is a potential therapy for replacing diseased or damaged muscle tissue. We have developed a computer-controlled system to build properly organized muscle tissue in the lab.
To do this, human muscle cells are attached to strands of collagen, or connective tissue. They are then subjected to cyclic stretching (“exercise”) in a bioreactor, which is a system designed to simulate the conditions of the human body. The pre-conditioning allows the cells to align in one direction, fuse to form muscle bundles, and function like normal muscle.