Rat skeletal muscles were stripped of every living cell to create a ghost structure that successfully grew into new, working tissue when implanted.
Skeletal muscles cannot naturally heal after a major injury, usually leaving patients with permanent disability and scar tissue. This process uses a special chemical wash to remove cells while leaving the intricate scaffolding of the muscle intact. Once this empty frame is placed into a body, the animal's own cells move in and begin contracting like original muscle. The test subjects regained full ankle joint movement after what should have been a catastrophic loss of tissue. This method offers a path to regrow limbs for people who have lost massive amounts of muscle to trauma or cancer.
Functional regeneration of volumetric muscle loss using decellularised skeletal muscles
research_square · rs-9351577
Abstract Although soft-tissue defects mostly attributed to trauma or musculoskeletal tumors cause significant loss of activities of daily living, treatment options remain limited. This study established a skeletal muscle decellularization protocol that contributes to functional limb reconstruction in vivo . When rat tibialis anterior muscles were decellularized with sodium dodecyl sulfate (SDS) at several concentrations (0.1–0.8%) for 1 to 7 days, immersion with 0.1% SDS for 7 days resulted in r