RESEARCHERS PURSUE SYNTHETIC 'SCAFFOLDS' FOR MUSCLE REGENERATION
posted: Dec. 22, 2016.
Miqin Zhang, a professor of materials science and engineering at the University of Washington, is looking for ways to help the body heal itself when injury, disease, or surgery cause large–scale damage to one type of tissue in particular: skeletal muscle. Muscles have a limited ability to regenerate, repair, and re-align themselves properly after certain types of damage. Zhang and her team are taking a synthetic approach to muscle regeneration. Their goal is to create a synthetic, porous, biologically compatible “scaffold” that mimics the normal extracellular environment of skeletal muscle — onto which human cells could migrate and grow new replacement fibers.
As she recently showed in a review article published online Nov. 16 in the journal Advanced Materials, this endeavor builds on decades of work into the growth, repair, and behavior of normal skeletal muscle, but also relies on keen knowledge of engineering and materials science.
Source: James Urton, University of Washington Health and Medicine News viaMDLinx [12/21/16]
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