Prolonged Culture of Aligned Skeletal Myotubes on Micromolded Gelatin Hydrogels.

ABSTRACT: In vitro models of skeletal muscle are critically needed to elucidate disease mechanisms, identify therapeutic targets, and test drugs pre-clinically. However, culturing skeletal muscle has been challenging due to myotube delamination from synthetic culture substrates approximately one week after initiating differentiation from myoblasts. In this study, we successfully maintained aligned skeletal myotubes differentiated from C2C12 mouse skeletal myoblasts for three weeks by utilizing micromolded (μmolded) gelatin hydrogels as culture substrates, which we thoroughly characterized using atomic force microscopy (AFM). Compared to polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS) microcontact printed (μprinted) with fibronectin (FN), cell adhesion on gelatin hydrogel constructs was significantly higher one week and

SUBMITTER: Bettadapur A 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC4924097 | biostudies-literature | 2016 Jun

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature