Evaluation of macroporous blood and plasma scaffolds for skeletal muscle tissue engineering

The field of tissue engineering has a growing need for suitable scaffold materials to become attractive as a clinical therapy. To use a completely autologous construct to repair a damaged or diseased tissue is an appealing thought. As a model system, two types of scaffolds were prepared from biological fluids: blood and plasma. The prepared scaffolds formed a macroporous structure with elastic mechanical properties that were further evaluated with myoblast cell line (C2C12) cultivation and transplantation into mouse skeletal muscle. The cells were found to attach, proliferate, and migrate through all the different scaffolds. Moreover, the cells underwent myogenic differentiation, showing typical cell morphology aligned in a parallel fashion. An increased level of myogenin mRNA was found with the time of culture. Furthermore, myogenic markers MyoD1, desmin, myogenin and myosin, as well as beta-dystroglycan and the laminin alpha 2 chain, were found to be expressed. In vivo data indicated that the scaffolds degraded and were replaced with regenerated muscle fibres. We conclude that the two types of macroporous scaffolds based on blood or plasma have potential in the field of skeletal muscle tissue engineering.