Evaluation of muscle contractility of L-anserine using three-dimensional cultured human skeletal muscle tissues

Abstract

As our population ages, muscle weakness associated with functional decline of skeletal muscles, such as sarcopenia, has become a problem. To address this, researchers are searching for food ingredients that can prevent muscle weakness. The process of searching for active ingredients usually involves efficacy evaluation tests using cultured cells. However, for evaluating ingredients that prevent muscle weakness, it is desirable to conduct efficacy evaluation using muscle strength as an indicator, which is difficult to measure with muscle cells cultured on a normal two-dimensional culture dish. Recently, research on microphysiological systems (MPS) has been active, and scientists have conducted efficacy evaluations using three-dimensional (3D) skeletal muscle tissue cultured on their own microdevice, using muscle strength as an indicator. In addition, the researchers investigated an evaluation system for 3D skeletal muscle tissue using primary human skeletal muscle cells, which is useful for evaluating human-derived cells rather than rodent-derived cells. This evaluation system is expected to be applied to research to evaluate the efficacy of food ingredients that contribute to the maintenance and improvement of skeletal muscle function. This paper describes the 3D culture system using a unique microdevice and introduces research on L-anserine, whose effect on improving muscle strength was confirmed in 3D skeletal muscle tissue using primary human skeletal muscle cells.