Week 7 - It's ALIVE!

“Science wat is it all abou, Techmology wat is dat all abou, is it good or is it wack!” Ali G (2003).

That doesn’t fit really into what I am going to write about, it just makes me laugh. As you all can tell by now I like science. I think what has been done and learnt in a relatively short period of history is amazing. And now I have come across this astonishing story.  Yes, I do have to say it is a press release that looks as if it has been printed without any judicious editing. Never-the-less, it is interesting.

Duke University have grown human muscle in a lab. I will add to this, not only have they grown human muscle in a lab, they have grown human muscle that works! This artificial muscle contracts and responds to external stimuli such as electrical pulses, biochemical signals and pharmaceuticals.  How cool is that! The benefits of this are mind boggling.

As stated in the article the main use currently will be testing the way drugs work on the muscle. That means a lab can grow a working muscle and carry out sophisticated testing on it. That, in turn, means that there would be less and less need for muscle biopsies, and if you have ever seen one done you know how much of a good thing that is.

Drug testing can be done in a controlled lab on human muscle tissue, which means we may even be able to take some of the animal testing out of the system and gain a better understanding of what drugs are doing within the muscle. With the use of functioning artificial muscle the efficacy and safety of drugs could be tested without jeopardising a patient's health. It may even be possible to produce the functional and biochemical signals of rare diseases allowing for early intervention. The possibilities are endless.

This is only the start of the possible applications of this technology; just think how this could be mixed with other scientific advances. This is just me spit balling: What about the all too common muscle injury or permanent damage? Could this be the start of building replacement muscle tissue? Or with the use of stem cells could we start to build working muscle where it was once lost?

Even if this article is an overstatement of what has actually been achieved and is only an unedited proof, it describes an awesome concept.  I look forward to hearing more about this.

Madden. L., Juhas. M., Kraus. W. E., Truskey. G. A.,  and Bursac. N. (2015) Bioengineered human myobundles mimic clinical responses of skeletal muscle to drugs. eLife,  4, doi: 10.7554/eLife.04885