Self-healing engineered muscle grown in the laboratory

Biomedical engineers have grown living skeletal muscle that looks a lot like the real thing. It contracts powerfully and rapidly, integrates into mice quickly, and for the first time, demonstrates the ability to heal itself both inside the laboratory and inside an animal.

The study conducted at Duke University tested the bioengineered muscle by literally watching it through a window on the back of living mouse. The novel technique allowed for real-time monitoring of the muscle's integration and maturation inside a living, walking animal.

Both the lab-grown muscle and experimental techniques are important steps toward growing viable muscle for studying diseases and treating injuries, said Nenad Bursac, associate professor of biomedical engineering at Duke.

"The muscle we have made represents an important advance for the field," Bursac said. "It's the first time engineered muscle has been created that contracts as strongly as native neonatal skeletal muscle."

Through years of perfecting their techniques, a team led by Bursac and graduate student Mark Juhas discovered that preparing better muscle requires two things -- well-developed contractile muscle fibers and a pool of muscle stem cells, known as satellite cells.

"Simply implanting satellite cells or less-developed muscle doesn't work as well," said Juhas. "The well-developed muscle we made provides niches for satellite cells to live in, and, when needed, to restore the robust musculature and its function."