[3S06e] 16. Cell and Tissue Engineering for Biomedical Process Innovation - Part 3

5:10 PM - 5:30 PM JST(8:10 AM - 8:30 AM UTC)

[3CTBP-11] Engineering Human Skeletal Muscle Microtissues Using a 96-Well Contractile Force Measurement Platform toward Functional Evaluation of Bioactive Compounds

○Kazunori Shimizu¹, Hirokazu Akiyama¹, Hiroyuki Honda¹ (1. Nagoya Univ. (Japan))

Keywords:

Microphysiological systems,In vitro models,Microdevices,Engineered tissues

Skeletal muscle is one of the largest tissues in the human body, accounting for approximately 40% of total body weight, and plays an essential role in supporting daily physical activities such as locomotion and posture maintenance. Therefore, declines in skeletal muscle function and loss of muscle strength caused by various factors, including aging, disease, malnutrition, and physical inactivity, represent critical challenges, as they markedly reduce quality of life and, in severe cases, can adversely affect survival. Accordingly, the development of preventive and therapeutic strategies for skeletal muscle dysfunction is becoming increasingly important in our aging society.Against this background, three-dimensional skeletal muscle tissues engineered from human cultured cells have attracted considerable attention as promising in vitro platforms for the development of pharmaceuticals and food-derived bioactive compounds targeting skeletal muscle dysfunction. In particular, their ability to directly evaluate contractility, the fundamental function of skeletal muscle, represents a major advantage. Functional evaluation systems based on the contractile force of engineered tissues therefore have strong potential as technologies to replace or reduce conventional animal experiments.To address this need, we have developed a 96-well plate-based evaluation platform that enables parallel quantification of the contractile force of engineered three-dimensional skeletal muscle microtissues across multiple samples [1]. This system enables parallel evaluation of multiple samples using only small numbers of cells and small volumes of culture medium, while allowing quantitative analysis of human skeletal muscle function based on contractile force. In this presentation, we will outline the development of this 96-well contractility assessment system and present recent research findings, including its application to the functional evaluation of food-derived bioactive compounds in human skeletal muscle microtissues [2–3].

[1] Yamamoto, K., et al. (2022), Biotechnol Bioeng, 119, 2196-2205
[2] Nagai, A., et al. (2023), J Agric Food Chem, 71, 8952-8958
[3] Nagai, A., et al. (2024), FASEB J, 38, e70009