Generating muscle from stem cells

(Harvard Gazette, November 18, 2013)

Harvard stem cell scientists have discovered that the same chemicals that stimulate muscle development in zebrafish can be used to differentiate human stem cells into muscle cells in the laboratory - and overcoming that historically challenging task has made muscle cell therapy a more realistic clinical possibility. The researchers first tested 2,400 chemicals in cultures of zebrafish embryo cells to determine if any could increase the numbers of muscle cells formed, and identified six active compounds. One of the six, called forskolin, was also found to increase the numbers of muscle stem cells from mice that could be obtained when these cells were grown in laboratory dishes. For human cells, it was found that a combination of three chemicals, including forskolin, could induce differentiation of human induced pluripotent stem (iPS) cells, made by reprogramming skin cells.