Skeletal Muscle Tissue Engineering - Current Concepts and Future Perspectives

Tissue engineering of skeletal muscle could have great advantages in every clinical setting in need of neurovascular muscle transfer, e.g., facial palsy or Volkmann's contracture. There are 2 great obstacles for the clinical application of engineered muscle tissue at the moment: firstly, finding a three-dimensional matrix that matches the demands concerning biocompatibility, stability and elasticity; secondly, the insufficient differentiation of implanted myoblasts, since myoblast differentiation in vivo is barely controllable and subject to a variety of influences. Furthermore axial vascularisation and neurotisation of such tissue-engineered skeletal muscle constructs play a pivotal role for any later application. An overview of the current status of skeletal muscle tissue engineering technologies and concepts for future perspective in this emerging field is presented in this article.