The challenge of musculoskeletal tissue engineering – from cell cultures to large animal models

Abstract

Engineering functional skeletal muscle tissue still remains a major challenge. So far clinically relevant sizes of functional skeletal muscle tissue could not be engineered yet. One of the obstacles to overcome is the development of a suitable scaffold for muscle tissue engineering in vivo, another is the lack of differentiation in expanded adult muscle precursor cells. Materials and different architectures of scaffolds which are used for engineering functional skeletal muscle are presented here as well as approaches to the differentiation challenge. Finally the translation from cell culture over small to large animal models for engineering axially vascularized musculoskeletal tissues will be described.

Keywords

• skeletal muscle tissue engineering
• axial vascularization
• electrospun nanofibers
• myoblasts
• mesenchymal stem cells
• large animal model