Aligned electrospun polymer fibres for skeletal muscle regeneration

Abstract

Skeletal muscle repair is often overlooked in surgical procedures and in serious burn victims. Creating a tissue-engineered skeletal muscle would not only provide a grafting material for these clinical situations, but could also be used as a valuable true-to-life research tool into diseases affecting muscle tissue. Electrospinning of the elastomer PLGA produced aligned fibres that had the correct topology to provide contact guidance for myoblast elongation and alignment. In addition, the electrospun scaffold required no surface modifications or incorporation of biologic material for adhesion, elongation, and differentiation of C2C12 murine myoblasts.