Loughborough University
Browse
443634.pdf (1.34 MB)

Creating interactions between tissue-engineered skeletal muscle and the peripheral nervous system

Download (1.34 MB)
journal contribution
posted on 2017-03-02, 14:13 authored by Alec S. Smith, Samantha L. Passey, Neil MartinNeil Martin, Darren Player, Vivek Mudera, Linda Greensmith, Mark LewisMark Lewis
Effective models of mammalian tissues must allow and encourage physiologically (mimetic) correct interactions between co-cultured cell types in order to produce culture microenvironments as similar as possible to those that would normally occur in vivo. In the case of skeletal muscle, the development of such a culture model, integrating multiple relevant cell types within a biomimetic scaffold, would be of significant benefit for investigations into the development, functional performance, and pathophysiology of skeletal muscle tissue. Although some work has been published regarding the behaviour of in vitro muscle models co-cultured with organotypic slices of CNS tissue or with stem cell-derived neurospheres, little investigation has so far been made regarding the potential to maintain isolated motor neurons within a 3D biomimetic skeletal muscle culture platform. Here, we review the current state of the art for engineering neuromuscular contacts in vitro and provide original data detailing the development of a 3D collagen-based model for the co-culture of primary muscle cells and motor neurons. The devised culture system promotes increased myoblast differentiation, forming arrays of parallel, aligned myotubes on which areas of nerve-muscle contact can be detected by immunostaining for pre- and post-synaptic proteins. Quantitative RT-PCR results indicate that motor neuron presence has a positive effect on myotube maturation, suggesting neural incorporation influences muscle development and maturation in vitro. The importance of this work is discussed in relation to other published neuromuscular co-culture platforms along with possible future directions for the field.

Funding

This work was funded by a grant provided by the National Centre for the Replacement, Refinement, and Reduction of Animals in Research [G0900762/1]. A.S.T.S. was supported by an MRC DTA fellowship. L.G. is The Graham Watts Senior Research Fellow, funded by The Brain Research Trust.

History

School

  • Sport, Exercise and Health Sciences

Published in

Cells Tissues Organs

Volume

202

Issue

3-4

Pages

143 - 158

Citation

SMITH, A.S. ... et al, 2016. Creating interactions between tissue-engineered skeletal muscle and the peripheral nervous system. Cells Tissues Organs, 202 (3-4), pp. 143-158.

Publisher

© The Author(s). Published by S. Karger AG

Version

  • VoR (Version of Record)

Publisher statement

This work is made available according to the conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0) licence. Full details of this licence are available at: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/ by/4.0/

Acceptance date

2015-12-22

Publication date

2016

Notes

This is an Open Access Article. It is published by S. Karger AG under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International Licence (CC BY). Full details of this licence are available at: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0

ISSN

1422-6405

eISSN

1422-6421

Language

  • en

Usage metrics

    Loughborough Publications

    Licence

    Exports

    RefWorks
    BibTeX
    Ref. manager
    Endnote
    DataCite
    NLM
    DC