Uniaxial cyclic strain of human adipose–derived mesenchymal stem cells and C2C12 myoblasts in coculture

Abstract

Tissue engineering skeletal muscle in vitro is of great importance for the production of tissue-like constructs for treating tissue loss due to traumatic injury or surgery. However, it is essential to find new sources of cells for muscle engineering as efficient in vitro expansion and culture of primary myoblasts are problematic. Mesenchymal stem cells may be a promising source of myogenic progenitor cells and may be harvested in large numbers from adipose tissue. As skeletal muscle is a mechanically dynamic tissue, we have investigated the effect of cyclic mechanical strain on the myogenic differentiation of a coculture system of murine C2C12 myoblasts and human adipose–derived mesenchymal stem cells. Fusion of mesenchymal stem cells with nascent myotubes and expression of human sarcomeric proteins was observed, indicating the potential for myogenic differentiation of human mesenchymal stem cells. Cyclic mechanical strain did not affect the fusion of mesenchymal stem cells, but maturation of myotubes was perturbed.

Impact of mechanical stretch on the cell behaviors of bone and surrounding tissues

“…There are clearly wider considerations when it comes to interpretation of the myotube data and also around the biomimetic nature of the systems and the interplay with other cell types. 77 The most powerful use is for comparing the same conditions across varying cell types, as described in this review.…”

Identifying the Cellular Mechanisms Leading to Heterotopic Ossification

“…Evidence of an osteogenic capacity has also been recorded for both rat (L6 cells) and mouse (C2C12 cells) skeletal muscle myoblasts following transfection with osteogenic inducers, such as BMPs [49,50]. Co-culture of C2C12 mouse myoblasts with MSCs has been shown to produce a pro-osteogenic environment, as determined by an increase in the expression of the primary osteogenic regulator Runx2 [51]. A study by Mu and Li (2010) identified TGF-β as a factor capable of inducing myoblast reversion to a multipotent cell type [52].…”

Multiple Effects of Mechanical Stretch on Myogenic Progenitor Cells

“…On the other hand, mechanical stretch was also reported to repress the expressions of these MRFs, such as Myog [27,37,[51][52][53][54] and Myod [51][52][53][54][55], which was consistent with impaired myogenic differentiation of C2C12 cells. In addition, Dugan et al [56] reported that both Myog and Myod were unaffected by mechanical stretch, but maturation of myotubes was perturbed.…”

“…However, even though some of the studies above corroborated this statement [48,49,51,52,54,55,67], other literatures seemed to display opposed results. In detail, some authors revealed the accelerated myoblast differentiation in response to equibiaxial stretch [44][45][46][47]58,60,66], while others uncovered dampened or unaffected myoblast differentiation by uniaxial stretch [53,56].…”