Journal of Clinical and Translational Science (Apr 2024)

481 A CTS Team Approach to Investigate Skeletal Muscle Diseases and Countermeasures in a Patient-Derived Bioengineered Muscle Platform

  • Karly Caples,
  • Zehra Fasih,
  • Elisabeth Barton,
  • Siobhan Malany

DOI
https://doi.org/10.1017/cts.2024.407
Journal volume & issue
Vol. 8
pp. 142 – 142

Abstract

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OBJECTIVES/GOALS: Our team has developed a high-throughput 3D patient-derived muscle platform to study signaling pathways associated with skeletal muscle disease. This platform will be used to study pathologies of human muscle that arise from genetic mutations and processes of aging along with pharmacologic interventions to improve mass, function, and performance. METHODS/STUDY POPULATION: In the current study, 3D skeletal muscle is formed from young healthy male samples. Samples are treated with urocortin II (UCNII) or vehicle for ten days and evaluated for tissue performance. Functional assessments include real-time contraction magnitudes using digital image correlation (DIC) analysis of video collected during electrical pulse stimulation and end-point measures of initial and repeated tetanic force production. Functional measures provide indices of patient muscle synchronicity, strength, and endurance related to drug efficacy and toxicity which we will correlate to pro-growth protein signaling via Luminex. A subset of these samples will also be analyzed by histology and microscopy to assess muscle fiber density, type, and size, as well as myotube fusion index and sarcomere uniformity. RESULTS/ANTICIPATED RESULTS: We anticipate that healthy muscle treated with UCNII will have increased synchronicity and contraction magnitudes in DIC analysis throughout their seven-day electrical pulse stimulation protocol. We also expect to see sustained contraction magnitudes in DIC analysis at the end of electrical pulse stimulation indicating fatigue resistance in the drug treated group compared to no-drug control. Like our real-time DIC data, we anticipate increases to initial and sustained maximal force production in the drug treated group. We expect that drug treated muscle will present with an increased fiber density, fiber diameter, and fusion index with uniform sarcomeres. Finally, we expect heightened pro-growth signaling pathways in treated vs. controls. DISCUSSION/SIGNIFICANCE: The current study will serve as an initial investigation of the endogenous ligand UCNII for enhancing skeletal muscle mass and performance in human muscle laying the framework for future drug efficacy and toxicity studies. This platform will ultimately enhance the study of muscle diseases and translation of therapeutics to clinical settings.