Analysis of human satellite cell dynamics on cultured adult skeletal muscle myofibers

Background Maintaining stem cells in physiologically relevant states is necessary to understand cell and context-specific signalling paradigms and to understand complex interfaces between cells in situ. Understanding human stem cell function is largely based on tissue biopsies, cell culture, and transplantation into model organisms. Methods Here, we describe a method to isolate post-mortem intact human muscle myofibers and culture muscle stem cells within the niche microenvironment to assay cellular dynamics, stem cell identity, stem cell hierarchy, and differentiation potential. Results We show human myofiber culture maintains complex cell-cell contacts and extracellular niche composition during culture. Human satellite cells can be cultured at least 8 days, which represents a timepoint of activation, differentiation, and de novo human myofiber formation. We demonstrate that adult human muscle stem cells undergo apicobasal and planar cell divisions and express polarized dystrophin and EGFR. Furthermore, we validate that stimulation of the EGFR pathway stimulates the generation of myogenic progenitors and myogenic differentiation. Conclusions This method provides proof of principle evidence for the use of human muscle to evaluate satellite cell dynamics and has applications in pre-clinical evaluation of therapeutics targeting muscle repair.

Automated summary

The described method isolates and cultures human muscle stem cells within a niche microenvironment to study the function and differentiation potential of these cells while maintaining complex cell-cell contacts and extracellular niche composition. The findings provide evidence for evaluating human muscle satellite cell dynamics and have potential applications in pre-clinical evaluation of therapeutics targeting muscle repair.