Personalized Medicine  

In first-of-its-kind research, scientists have successfully grown skeletal muscle in the lab that functions as it would in the human body, including in its response to drugs. The breakthrough may open up personalized medicine developments in the future.

Duke University researchers have grown human skeletal muscle for the first time that contracts and responds just like native tissue to external stimuli such as electrical pulses, biochemical signals and pharmaceuticals.

The lab-grown tissue should soon allow researchers to test new drugs and study diseases in functioning human muscle outside of the human body.

"One of our goals is to use this method to provide personalized medicine to patients. We can take a biopsy from each patient, grow many new muscles to use as test samples and experiment to see which drugs would work best for each person."

The study was led by Nenad Bursac, associate professor of biomedical engineering at Duke University, and Lauran Madden, a postdoctoral researcher in Bursac’s laboratory. The study has been published in the open-access journal eLife.

“The beauty of this work is that it can serve as a test bed for clinical trials in a dish,” said Bursac. “We are working to test drugs’ efficacy and safety without jeopardizing a patient’s health and also to reproduce the functional and biochemical signals of diseases—especially rare ones and those that make taking muscle biopsies difficult.”

Bursac and Madden started with a small sample of human cells that had already progressed beyond stem cells but hadn’t yet become muscle tissue. They expanded these “myogenic precursors” by more than a 1000-fold, and then put them into a supportive, 3D scaffolding filled with a nourishing gel that allowed them to form aligned and functioning muscle fibers.

“We have a lot of experience making bioartifical muscles from animal cells in the laboratory, and it still took us a year of adjusting variables like cell and gel density and optimizing the culture matrix and media to make this work with human muscle cells,” said Madden.

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Madden subjected the new muscle to a barrage of tests to determine how closely it resembled native tissue inside a human body. She found that the muscles robustly contracted in response to electrical stimuli—a first for human muscle grown in a laboratory. She also showed that the signaling pathways allowing nerves to activate the muscle were intact and functional.

To see if the muscle could be used as a proxy for medical tests, Bursac and Madden studied its response to a variety of drugs, including statins used to lower cholesterol and clenbuterol, a drug known to be used off-label as a performance enhancer for athletes.

The effects of the drugs matched those seen in human patients. The statins had a dose-dependent response, causing abnormal fat accumulation at high concentrations. Clenbuterol showed a narrow beneficial window for increased contraction. Both of these effects have been documented in humans. Clenbuterol does not harm muscle tissue in rodents at those doses, showing the lab-grown muscle was giving a truly human response.

“One of our goals is to use this method to provide personalized medicine to patients,” said Bursac. “We can take a biopsy from each patient, grow many new muscles to use as test samples and experiment to see which drugs would work best for each person.”

This goal may not be far away now.  Bursac's group is also trying to grow contracting human muscles using induced pluripotent stem cells instead of biopsied cells.

SOURCE  Duke University

By 33rd Square

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 Anti-Aging  

Science and technology (and soon possibly politics) are increasingly providing anti-aging benefits.  Here are a few examples of ways to counter some of the signs of aging now.

Everyone wants to look, feel and act young for as long as they can. Although scientists haven't yet discovered the Fountain of Youth they have made progress in defeating many of the signs and symptoms of aging.

1. Fractional Laser Resurfacing

Gentle laser treatments have rapidly become the gold standard way to defeat visible signs of aging. Older laser resurfacing treatments burned off the outer layer of skin, triggering a healing response; while effective in erasing signs of aging, they were painful and had a fairly long recovery time. Fractional laser resurfacing triggers the same healing process without damaging the outer surface of the skin. There may be some minor reddening that lasts for a day or two.

2. Wrinkle Fillers

The FDA approved four new injectable wrinkle fillers last year. Unlike a facelift that just stretches the skin, wrinkle fillers plump up the skin from underneath, creating a more natural, youthful look. Most current fillers last for over a year and some are essentially permanent.

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3. Antioxidants

Antioxidants fight aging by mopping up damaging free radicals that are created by sunlight, oxygen and exposure to toxins. Antioxidants can and should both be eaten and applied to the face. A number of cosmetic companies are coming out with products to be applied to the face that are loaded with powerful antioxidants to stop the aging process in its tracks.

4. Peptides

Small peptides are very exciting in the field of aging because they can easily enter the skin from a topical preparation. Various small peptides that promote collagen formation, inhibit the formation of wrinkles, and promote skin growth have been discovered and are being released commercially in various serum and cream preparations.

5. Statins

Although statins have been around for some time and aren't usually thought of as "anti-aging" technology, they actually do act to prevent many age-related conditions. Statins help prevent arteries from being clogged up. Clogged arteries have been implicated in causing many age-related conditions, such as reduced energy, impaired cognition and even dementia. More recently, statins have been shown to increase bone growth and they may stave off another common condition of aging, osteoporosis.

6. Bioidentical Hormone Replacement

Many natural hormones- DHEA, human growth hormone, melatonin- decline slowly as we age. The various sex hormones- testosterone, estrogen and progesterone- also tend to decline after middle-age. Although supplementing with bioidentical hormones can produce almost miraculous results, the Genemedics Health Institute reminds us that it is important the process be individualized to balance the hormonal levels in each individual only after testing in order to avoid side effects.

Science hasn't yet found the Fountain of Youth, but it has discovered ways to look and feel more youthful.

By Karleia Steiner

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