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New technique promises faster muscle recovery
MIT researchers, led by Ritu Raman, developed light-responsive muscle grafts that enhanced muscle recovery post-trauma.
Representative Image / Unsplash
Ritu Raman, the d’Arbeloff Career Development assistant professor of Mechanical Engineering at MIT, has spearheaded a groundbreaking study alongside her collaborators that may lead to a potential solution to restore mobility for those who have suffered muscle loss due to disease or trauma.
Severe muscle injuries, often resulting from traumatic accidents, have posed challenges to medical science. To address the issue, the researchers developed special muscle grafts that respond to light.
During the initial testing on injured mice, researchers found that on exercising the implanted graft in light the mice were able to recover completely and quickly. Their research, published in Biomaterials, showed the implantation helped the mice's muscles get much better motor function, even matching the levels of healthy subjects within just two weeks.
Raman said, “For so many years, I had an idea that if we were able to exercise muscle grafts after they'd been implanted in an injury, we'd be able to keep the graft active and prevent it from atrophying by integrating it with the surrounding host tissue.”
Explaining their procedure of testing, Raman explained, “We engineer optogenetic muscle grafts that contract in response to light and implant these within mice with muscle loss injuries in their hind legs. We then ‘exercise’ the implant daily by noninvasively shining light on the mouse's leg through the skin. The approach keeps muscle implants active while they are engrafting with the surrounding host tissue.”
She added, “Exercising muscle grafts after they've been implanted does more than just make muscle stronger, it also appears to affect how muscle communicates with other tissue, like blood vessels and nerves. By actively communicating with the implant and exercising the muscle graft, you can actually improve and accelerate recovery timelines.”
When patients sustain muscle damage, doctors typically implant artificial tissue and watch for recovery. But the new approach is different, as they have to get the muscles to contract and move after being implanted. This has the potential to improve the quality of life for people who have lost muscle mass as a result of serious injuries.
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