Duchenne muscular dystrophy (DMD) is a muscle degenerating disease caused by dystrophin deficiency, for which therapeutic options are limited. To facilitate drug development, it is desirable to develop in vitro disease models that enable the evaluation of DMD declines in contractile performance. Here, we show MYOD1-induced differentiation of hiPSCs into functional skeletal myotubes in vitro with collagen gel and electrical field stimulation (EFS). Long-term EFS training (0.5 Hz, 20 V, 2 ms, continuous for 2 weeks) mimicking muscle overuse recapitulates declines in contractile performance in dystrophic myotubes. A screening of clinically relevant drugs using this model detects three compounds that ameliorate this decline. Furthermore, we validate the feasibility of adapting the model to a 96-well culture system using optogenetic technology for large-scale screening. Our results support a disease model using patient-derived iPSCs that allows for the recapitulation of the contractile pathogenesis of DMD and a screening strategy for drug development.
Keywords: Duchenne muscular dystrophy; EFS training; contractile dysfunction; high-throughput; induced pluripotent stem cells; mature myotube differentiation model; muscle overuse; optogenetics; skeletal muscle cells.
© 2021 The Author(s).