Cyclic mechanical cells stimulation of myoblasts in skeletal muscle tissue engineering: a preliminary study

The aim of this study is to evaluate how cyclic mechanical stretching influences skeletal muscle differentiation. To this purpose we realized a mechanical bioreactor that reproduces in vitro a cyclic mechanical stretching of cells seeded on to a polymeric scaffold. The bioreactor consists of three fundamental parts: a Petri dish (in polycarbonate Lexan®), the stretching scaffold device and a controlled DC motor. Firstly we performed tests of cellular adhesion on different membranes to identify the best cell culture surface using the murine muscular cell line C2C12, and after the identification of the culture surface we examined the role of cyclic mechanical stimulation on differentiation of C2C12 cells. We analysed the expression of genes involved in muscle differentiation by RT-PCR. Our results demonstrate that although the dynamic culture expressed a noticeable quantity of myosin (MLC3F) the cells did not significantly differentiate.