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Researchers at Duke University have engineered the first lab-grown muscle capable of contracting. It's a big step toward doctors being able to restore mobility to atrophied muscle groups, create custom muscles tailored to a patient, and test medicine without endangering human subjects.

While previous studies have created such lab-grown tissue, those earlier projects were only a proving ground to show that lab-grown muscle was possible; it was not yet functional. By stimulating the synthetic muscle electrically (much like you would when trying to repair real muscles through diode stimulation), the Duke scientists could make it contract.

The muscle was built by expanding adult stem cells into a 3D-printed scaffolding, then filling it with a gel that provided nutrition for the cells. Now the researchers are working on refining the process. For their next steps, they'll try using different kinds of stem cells, stepping away from the laborious process of extracting adult muscle stem cells from patients.

Via The Verge.

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