Engineering Skeletal Muscle Grafts with PAX7::GFP-Sorted Human Pluripotent Stem Cell-Derived Myogenic Progenitors on Fibrin Microfiber Bundles for Tissue Regeneration

Abstract

Tissue engineering strategies that combine human pluripotent stem cell-derived myogenic progenitors (hPDMs) with advanced biomaterials provide promising tools for engineering 3D skeletal muscle grafts to model tissue development in vitro and promote muscle regeneration in vivo. We recently demonstrated (i) the potential for obtaining large numbers of hPDMs using a combination of two small molecules without the overexpression of transgenes and (ii) the application of electrospun fibrin microfiber bundles for functional skeletal muscle restoration following volumetric muscle loss. In this study, we aimed to demonstrate that the biophysical cues provided by the fibrin microfiber bundles induce hPDMs to form engineered human skeletal muscle grafts containing multinucleated myotubes that express desmin and myosin heavy chains and that these grafts could promote regeneration following skeletal muscle injuries. We tested a genetic PAX7 reporter line (PAX7::GFP) to sort for more homogenous populations of hPDMs. RNA sequencing and gene set enrichment analyses confirmed that PAX7::GFP-sorted hPDMs exhibited high expression of myogenic genes. We tested engineered human skeletal muscle grafts derived from PAX7::GFP-sorted hPDMs within in vivo skeletal muscle defects by assessing myogenesis, engraftment and immunogenicity using immunohistochemical staining. The PAX7::GFP-sorted groups had moderately high vascular infiltration and more implanted cell association with embryonic myosin heavy chain (eMHC) regions, suggesting they induced pro-regenerative microenvironments. These findings demonstrated the promise for the use of PAX7::GFP-sorted hPDMs on fibrin microfiber bundles and provided some insights for improving the cell–biomaterial system to stimulate more robust in vivo skeletal muscle regeneration.