Building muscle in the lab
A new method allows large quantities of muscle stem cells to be safely obtained in cell culture. This provides a potential for treating patients with muscle diseases – and for those who would like to eat meat, but don’t want to kill animals.
In brief
- Connective tissue cells can now be transformed into muscle stem cells without genetic engineering.
- This approach could prove relevant for therapeutic applications in patients with muscle diseases.
- In developing this new method, the researchers were inspired by the mRNA vaccines for COVID-19.