No gym needed: scientists in China develop self-exercising muscle grafts

Scientists in China have created a self-exercising muscle graft that could allow bedridden people to obtain the benefits of working out without any physical exertion.With just an injection of muscle cells below the skin, the cells self-assembled into muscle grafts, which not only improved whole-body muscle mass in mice but also led to improvements in bone density, endurance, liver function and cognitive health.The “myografts” could provide the health benefits of exercise to patients with age-related conditions such as Alzheimer’s and osteoporosis, and future applications could even extend to those who just want to build muscle without hitting the gym.“While the complete safety and [pharmacological] profile of autologous myografts remains to be established in human trials, our mouse preclinical studies constitute a noteworthy first step in this direction,” the team said in a paper published in the peer-reviewed journal Nature Ageing on Wednesday.“In a sense, we’re distilling the best part of exercise out … and avoiding all the negative effects of exercise, whether it’s the stress on the heart or the stress on your joints,” said study author Ng Shyh-Chang, a professor and principal investigator at the Chinese Academy of Sciences’ Institute of Zoology.Moreover, the team found that the myografts could be used as a living biofactory to produce targeted therapeutic proteins within the body, including compounds such as GLP-1, which is used to manage diabetes and as a weight-loss tool.