PT  - JOURNAL ARTICLE
AU  - Christine T Nguyen
AU  - Majid Ebrahmi
AU  - Penney M Gilbert
AU  - Bryan A Stewart
TI  - Electrophysiological analysis of healthy and dystrophic 3D bioengineered skeletal muscle tissues
AID  - 10.1101/2020.11.10.376764
DP  - 2020 Jan 01
TA  - bioRxiv
PG  - 2020.11.10.376764
4099  - http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2020/11/10/2020.11.10.376764.short
4100  - http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2020/11/10/2020.11.10.376764.full
AB  - Recently, methods for creating three-dimensional (3D) human skeletal muscle tissues from myogenic cell lines have been reported. Bioengineered muscle tissues are contractile and respond to electrical and chemical stimulation. In this study we provide an electrophysiological analysis of healthy and dystrophic 3D bioengineered skeletal muscle tissues. We focus on Duchenne muscular dystrophy (DMD), a fatal muscle disorder involving the skeletal muscle system. The dystrophin gene, which when mutated causes DMD, encodes for the Dystrophin protein, which anchors the cytoskeletal network inside of a muscle cell to the extracellular matrix outside the cell. Here, we enlist a 3D in vitro model of DMD muscle tissue, to evaluate an understudied aspect of DMD, muscle cell electrical properties uncoupled from presynaptic neural inputs. Our data shows that electrophysiological aspects of DMD are replicated in the 3D bioengineered skeletal muscle tissue model. Furthermore, we test a block co-polymer, poloxamer 188, and demonstrate capacity for improving the membrane potential in DMD muscle.Therefore, this study serves as the baseline for a new in vitro method to examine potential therapies directed at muscular disorders.Competing Interest StatementThe authors have declared no competing interest.