A study led by a team of researchers from UCLA identified a chemical cocktail that allows the production of huge numbers of muscle stem cells with the ability to self-renew and give rise to all skeletal muscle types.

This advancement, according to a Medical Xpress report, could lead to the development of stem cell-based treatments for muscle damage or loss because of injury, disease, or illness.

Muscle cells are essentially responsible for the growth, regeneration, and repair of muscles after an injury throughout the life of a person.

In completely grown adults, muscle stem cells are inactive. Meaning, they remain quiescent until they are called to react to injury by self-duplicating and developing all types of cells essential for the repair of impaired tissue.

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Duchenne Muscular Dystrophy

However, as indicated in the study which Nature Biomedical Engineering published (Skeletal muscle regeneration via the chemical induction and expansion of myogenic stem cells in situ or in vitro), that regenerative ability reduces as people age. It can also be compromised by traumatic injuries and by genetic illnesses like Duchenne muscular dystrophy.

According to the study's senior author, Song Li, who's also a member of the Eli and Edythe Broad Center of Regenerative Medicine and Stem Cell Research at UCLA, muscle stem cell-based treatments present a lot of promise for enhancing muscle regeneration, but existing methods for producing patient-specific muscle stem cells can take months.

Li, together with his colleagues identified a chemical cocktail, a mixture of the root extract forskolin and the tiny molecule RepSox, that can effectively generate large numbers of muscle stem cells within 10 days.

In studies of mice, the study investigators revealed two potential opportunities by which the cocktails could be used as a treatment.


Two Methods Applied

The first method, according to the study, uses cells that exist in the skin, identified as dermal myogenic cells, with the capacity of becoming muscle cells.

The team found out that treating derma myogenic cells through the chemical cocktail drove them to generate large numbers of muscle stem cells, which could then be transplanted into injured tissue.

The Li-led research team tested that method in three groups of mice that have muscle injuries, specifically adult eight-week-old mice, elderly 18-month-old mice, and adult mice with a genetic mutation the same as the one that causes Duchenne in people.

After four weeks the cells got transplanted, the muscle stem cells had integrated into the impaired muscle and substantially enhanced muscle function in all three mice groups.

For the second approach, the research team utilized nanoparticles for the delivery of chemical cocktails into impaired muscle tissue.

The nanoparticles, roughly one 100th the size of a grain of sand, and are made of the similar material as dissolvable surgical stitches, and they are made to discharge the chemicals slowly as they collapse.

This second approach also generated a robust repair reaction in all three mice types. When injected into the injured muscle, the said nanoparticles migrated all over the injured area and produced the chemicals, which activated the inactive muscle stem cells to start splitting.

Chemical Cocktail Enabling Muscle Stem Cells

While both approaches were successful, the key advantage of the second technique is that it took out the need for growing cells in the laboratory. Meaning, all of the stem cell activation, and regeneration are occurring inside the body.

The team of researchers was specifically surprised to discover that the second approach was effective even in elderly mice, despite the fact that as animals are aging, the environments surrounding and supporting muscle stem cells turn out to be less effective.

Li, also chair of bioengineering at the UCLA Samueli School of Engineering and medicine professor at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA explained their chemical cocktails allowed muscle stem cells in elderly mice to overcome their negative environment and introduce a vigorous repair reaction.

Related report on Duchenne Muscular Dystrophy is shown in Medicurio's YouTube video below:

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