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Email You are free to share this article under the Attribution 4.0 International license. University University of Washington

Strategies from engineering could help the body heal itself when injury, disease, or surgery causes large-scale damage to skeletal muscle.

Miqin Zhang, a professor of materials science and engineering at the University of Washington, and her team are taking a synthetic approach to muscle regeneration. Their goal is to create a synthetic, porous, biologically compatible “scaffold” that mimics the normal extracellular environment of skeletal muscle—onto which human cells could migrate and grow new replacement fibers.

As she recently showed in a review article in Advanced Materials, this endeavor builds on decades of work into the growth, repair, and behavior of normal skeletal muscle, but also relies on knowledge of engineering and materials science. Here, Zhang explains the project’s goals and progress to date.