Minimally Invasive Muscle Embedding (MIME) - A Novel Experimental Technique to Facilitate Donor-Cell-Mediated Myogenesis

Skeletal muscle possesses regenerative capacity due to tissue-resident, muscle-fiber-generating (myogenic) satellite cells (SCs), which can form new muscle fibers under the right conditions. Although SCs can be harvested from muscle tissue and cultured in vitro, the resulting myoblast cells are not very effective in promoting myogenesis when transplanted into host muscle. Surgically exposing the host muscle and grafting segments of donor muscle tissue, or the isolated muscle fibers with their SCs onto host muscle, promotes better myogenesis compared to myoblast transplantation. We have developed a novel technique that we call Minimally Invasive Muscle Embedding (MIME). MIME involves passing a surgical needle through the host muscle, drawing a piece of donor muscle tissue through the needle track, and then leaving the donor tissue embedded in the host muscle so that it may act as a source of SCs for the host muscle. Here we describe in detail the steps involved in performing MIME in an immunodeficient mouse model that expresses a green fluorescent protein (GFP) in all of its cells. Immunodeficiency in the host mouse reduces the risk of immune rejection of the donor tissue, and GFP expression enables easy identification of the host muscle fibers (GFP+) and donor-cell-derived muscle fibers (GFP-). Our pilot data suggest that MIME can be used to implant an extensor digitorum longus (EDL) muscle from a donor mouse into the tibialis anterior (TA) muscle of a host mouse. Our data also suggest that when a myotoxin (barium chloride, BaCl2) is injected into the host muscle after MIME, there is evidence of donor-cell-derived myogenesis in the host muscle, with approximately 5%, 26%, 26% and 43% of the fibers in a single host TA muscle showing no host contribution, minimal host contribution, moderate host contribution, and maximal host contribution, respectively.