Development of a human skeletal muscle based mechanobiological screening platform

Tissue engineering of skeletal muscle is a quickly developing field with applications in drug screening, understanding etiology of disease, regenerative medicine and cultured meat. Nevertheless, the field is still in its infancy with one of the main issues a limited set of tools to assess in a medium- to high-throughput fashion muscle biomechanical characteristics. Characterization of the mechanical properties of tissue-engineered muscle provides essential feedback for the further development of these tissues, including interaction with non-muscle cell types, effect of extracellular matrix composition, effects of media composition etc. Therefore, the purpose is to develop a state-of-the-art testing platform dedicated to tissue-engineered muscle characterization. Several methods for visco-elastic characterization have been described already, but variations in the methodology impede comparison. In our case, we will develop a system that measures tensile characteristics based on displacement of attachment sites as measured by video-analysis and/or integrated electronics. A complete workflow for visco-elastic measurements of tissue- engineered muscle will be optimized. Therefore, the work will also focus on the analysis, interpretation and visualization of measured data and this will happen in a multidisciplinary setting in interaction with biological developments where aspects of the tissue-engineering procedure itself and downstream applications are developed. Additionally, after tissue engineering, skeletal muscle are immature and ways to stimulate maturation on a similar scale are currently inexistent. We will investigate the integration of electromechanical stimulation in the above setup. This research is at the intersection of the biomedical and engineering field. Therefore, this research will be carried out as a joint PhD between KULeuven and Ecole Centrale (Lille, France).