Functional evaluation of prevascularization in one-stage versus two-stage tissue engineering approach of human bio-artificial muscle.

A common shortcoming of current tissue engineered constructs is the lack of a functional vasculature, limiting their size and functionality. Prevascularization is a possible strategy to introduce vascular networks in these constructs. It includes among others co-culturing target cells with endothelial (precursor) cells that are able to form endothelial networks through vasculogenesis.

Vascularization of tissue-engineered skeletal muscle constructs.

Skeletal muscle tissue can be created in vitro by tissue engineering approaches, based on differentiation of muscle stem cells. Several approaches exist and generally result in three dimensional constructs composed of multinucleated myofibers to which we refer as myooids. Engineering methods date back to 3 decades ago and meanwhile a wide range of cell types and scaffold types have been evaluated.

Coculture Method to Obtain Endothelial Networks Within Human Tissue-Engineered Skeletal Muscle.

Skeletal muscle tissue engineering aims at creating functional skeletal muscle in vitro. Human muscle organoids can be used for potential applications in regenerative medicine, but also as an in vitro model for myogenesis or myopathology. However, the thickness of constructs is limited due to passive diffusion of nutrients and oxygen.

Human tissue-engineered skeletal muscle: a novel 3D in vitro model for drug disposition and toxicity after intramuscular injection.

The development of laboratory-grown tissues, referred to as organoids, bio-artificial tissue or tissue-engineered constructs, is clearly expanding. We describe for the first time how engineered human muscles can be applied as a pre- or non-clinical model for intramuscular drug injection to further decrease and complement the use of in vivo animal studies. The human bio-artificial muscle (BAM) is formed in a seven day tissue engineering procedure during which human myoblasts fuse and differentiate to aligned myofibers in an extracellular matrix.

Endothelial Network Formation Within Human Tissue-Engineered Skeletal Muscle.

The size of in vitro engineered skeletal muscle tissue is limited due to the lack of a vascular network in vitro. In this article, we report tissue-engineered skeletal muscle consisting of human aligned myofibers with interspersed endothelial networks. We extend our bioartificial muscle (BAM) model by coculturing human muscle progenitor cells with human umbilical vein endothelial cells (HUVECs) in a fibrin extracellular matrix (ECM).