Muscle tissue engineering

Skeletal muscle tissue engineering is relatively new field exploiting knowledge of histology, cell biology, medicine, chemistry and engineering to regenerate, reconstruct and replace damaged or lost muscles. The detailed picture of the muscle histophysiology, the characteristic organization of the muscular tissue and the influence of specific location (cell niche) on muscle stem cell behaviour explain the rationale of limited results obtained so far to mimic this complex architecture organization of the skeletal muscle tissue. Nevertheless the novel approaches through new muscle progenitor/stem cell consciousness together with modern three-dimensional cell culture systems relying on innovative material scaffold guaranteeing versatility, cell adhesion, cell survival and muscle differentiation, offer a completely new scenario for the future application of these biotechnology for the treatment of muscle degenerating affected individual.