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Victoria Bela

Scientists in China have created a self-exercising muscle graft that might allow bedridden people to gain the benefits of working out without any physical exertion.
With just an injection of muscle cells below the skin, the cells self-assembled into muscle grafts, which not only improved whole-body muscle mass in mice but also led to improvements in bone density, endurance, liver function and cognitive health.
The “myografts” could provide the health benefits of exercise to patients with age-related conditions such as Alzheimer’s and osteoporosis, and future applications could even extend to those who just want to build muscle without hitting the gym.
“While the complete safety and [pharmacological] profile of autologous myografts remains to be established in human trials, our mouse preclinical studies constitute a noteworthy first step in this direction,” the team said in a paper published in the peer-reviewed journal Nature Ageing on Wednesday.
“In a sense, we’re distilling the best part of exercise out … and avoiding all the negative effects of exercise, whether it’s the stress on the heart or the stress on your joints,” said study author Ng Shyh-Chang, a professor and principal investigator at the Chinese Academy of Sciences’ Institute of Zoology.
Moreover, the team found that the myografts could be used as a living biofactory to produce targeted therapeutic proteins within the body, including compounds such as GLP-1, which is used to manage diabetes and as a weight-loss tool.
During exercise, skeletal muscle can secrete hundreds of kinds of proteins that help give working out its multi-organ benefits, but also plays a role in suppressing factors related to ageing, such as the loss of bone density and muscle mass.
Exercise is known to address both metabolic and degenerative diseases associated with ageing and obesity. But the people who are most in need can also be those who have the most trouble with physical movement.

“It turns out that the people who need exercise the most are also the folks who cannot exercise the most,” Ng said.
“So we need some way to mimic exercise to get them started, to get their basic health going before they can actually do the exercise that they need to do.”
Ng said his team initially tried to transplant lab-grown muscle organoids into mice. Organoids are miniature, artificial versions of real organs designed to mimic their natural counterparts.
However, early efforts failed because the three-dimensional cell structures were too large for nutrients to diffuse properly, causing them to die.
“Then my students decided, why don’t we just go back to the basics. Why don’t we just put the cells under the skin and let them form the organoid slowly under the skin,” he said.
The sheer amount of good factors it’s secreting exceeds what you can get from acute exercise for just one hour
Ng Shyh-Chang, professor
This was achieved using myocytes – specialised cells that make up muscle tissue – that were derived from mouse muscle stem cells. Once transplanted into the skin along with a supportive gel scaffold, these cells self-organised into mature myografts capable of long-term spontaneous contractions without any physical or neural input.


“We found that subcutaneous myograft transplantation ameliorates many problems associated with ageing, including muscle atrophy, osteoporosis, chronic inflammation, liver damage and metabolic dysfunction,” the team wrote in the paper.
The myografts were able to improve muscle mass across the bodies of ageing and obese mouse models, leading to better outcomes in strength and mobility tests.
Ng said they were still trying to understand what was being secreted by the myografts to offer all these benefits, but the fact that they constantly contracted might play a role.
“It’s contracting non-stop, 24/7, so it’s persistently secreting the good beneficial factors into the bloodstream,” he said.
“The sheer amount of good factors it’s secreting exceeds what you can get from acute exercise for just one hour.”


He said the muscle fibres assembled were also younger or immature, which could allow them to secrete higher concentrations of beneficial factors than older, mature muscles.
Over time, the grafts gradually mature and integrate with local blood vessels, all while remaining stable with no tumour-like growth.
When asked about the potential for over-exercise, Ng said his team had not seen signs of toxicity or negative health impacts so far, though he noted that clinical trials were necessary to confirm safety.
The team is considering trials with intensive care unit patients. Once safety and efficacy were confirmed, they planned to test the myografts in broader patient populations, Ng said.
He noted that while the grafts were implanted shallowly in mice for easy visual tracking, human skin was thicker. He added that the transplant site would be chosen carefully so that the movement of the grafts was not obvious.


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China

The team says ‘myografts’ could provide health benefits to those who cannot exercise easily, such as bedridden people


The team says ‘myografts’ could provide health benefits to those who cannot exercise easily, such as bedridden people.


No gym needed? Scientists in China develop self-exercising muscle grafts

.css-1c6uqr6{color:inherit;font-weight:inherit;font-size:inherit;font-family:inherit;line-height:inherit;overflow-wrap:break-word;}The team says ‘myografts’ could provide health benefits to those who cannot exercise easily, such as bedridden people

The team says ‘myografts’ could provide health benefits to those who cannot exercise easily, such as bedridden people