Musculoskeletal Tissue Engineering

Muscle tissue engineering for disease modeling and regenerative medicine purposes

Our laboratory is dedicated to the development of 3D-aligned muscle bioconstructs for both basic research and therapeutic applications in the field of regenerative medicine. In recent research, we developed an electrospinning-based approach to create muscle bioconstructs that contain both muscle stem cells and fibers capable of self-repair following myonecrotic-induced injury (external page Kim et al., Adv. Funct. Mater., 2023). This method holds promise for regenerative medicine by offering a platform for studying muscle regeneration and repair mechanisms. Furthermore, our lab fosters collaborations with other research groups in ETH Zurich as part of the ALIVE initiative (https://map.ethz.ch/research/alive.html). This collaboration aims to engineer an in vitro joint model actuated by skeletal muscle, exploring an interdisciplinary approach in joint biology. In addition to these initiatives, our research interest extends to the generation of patient-specific contractile human muscle constructs derived from muscular dystrophy patients. These constructs can serve as a valuable tool for a wide-range of applications including basic research, disease modeling, gene therapies and drug screens.