Skeletal Muscle Differentiation Kit Enables Novel Duchenne Myopathy Research

AMSBIO has reported an independent evaluation and use by I-Stem of the Skeletal Muscle Differentiation kit - a cell culture media system to differentiate human stem cells into functional myotubes.

I-Stem was formed in 2005 through a collaboration between Inserm, the French National Institute of Health and Medical Research, and AFM-Telethon the French Association against Myopathies. I-Stem is the largest French laboratory for research and development dedicated to human pluripotent stem cells. The objectives of the I-Stem muscular disease team are to explore and validate the potential of pluripotent stem cells and their differentiated progenies to design new therapeutic strategies for muscles diseases.

The potential to differentiate stem cells into specific cell types is revolutionizing life sciences, from new methods of studying developmental biology and novel approaches to producing accurate disease models to techniques to help drug discovery and toxicity testing.

Until recently, methods of studying muscular disease and metabolic disorders and potential therapies were dependent on invasive muscle biopsies to produce limited batches of primary cells. For many years, researchers looked for a simple protocol to obtain skeletal muscle cells from pluripotent stem cells. The Skeletal Muscle Differentiation kit offers an efficient method to differentiate human stem cells into skeletal muscle cells that demonstrate disease-specific phenotypes.

Emmanuelle Massouridès, a research engineer within the muscular disease team led by Christian Pinset at I-Stem commented "Following the simple 3-step process of media changes and cell passaging we were able to reliably obtain a homogenous population of skeletal muscle precursor cells in only 17 to 21 days from human induced pluripotent stem cells. Using these precursors we have been able to differentiate and form myotubes in 8 days with just a simple switch of medium". Dr. Massouridès added "This new protocol allows easy scale up of myoblast production by automation, cell modelling and high throughput screening. In our case, the Skeletal Muscle Differentiation protocol has given us the opportunity to study the onset of Duchenne myopathy in a dish and to decipher roles of Dystrophin toward different stages of muscle lineage differentiation."

The Skeletal Muscle Differentiation kit from AMSBIO offers researchers a unique tool to rapidly differentiate donor stems into functional myotubes in a reproducible fashion. Tested on a wide range of human embryonic and induced pluripotent stem cell lines the new kit follows a simple 3-step process of media changes and cell passaging. Eliminating the need for cell sorting or transfection of myogenic transcription factors, the 3-step protocol generates a highly pure population of approximately 70 per cent skeletal muscle myotubes in weeks.

Find further information on the Skeletal Muscle Differentiation Kit here.