Rakhilin Sergey, Turner Gordon, Katz Mark, Warden Robert, Irelan Jeff, Abassi Yama A, Glass David J
Novartis Institute for Biomedical Research, Cambridge, MA, USA.
J Biomol Screen. 2011 Jul;16(6):565-74. doi: 10.1177/1087057111401392. Epub 2011 Apr 14.
Measuring myotube thickness is a physiological and unbiased approach for screening therapeutic compounds that prevent skeletal muscle atrophy or induce hypertrophy. However, an accurate cell thickness estimate is often quite challenging because of the extreme heterogeneity of the myotube cellular population and therefore the lack of a regular distribution of perturbed myotubes. Here the authors present a novel method to evaluate changes in myotube thickness via measuring cellular electrical impedance. They demonstrate that both qualitative and quantitative changes in electrical impedance as a function of cellular adhesion in real time correlate well with variation in myotube thickness caused by atrophy or hypertrophy agents. Conversely, pharmacologically blocking myotube hypertrophy prevents changes in electrical impedance. Thus, impedance can be used as a reliable and sensitive biomarker for myotube atrophy or hypertrophy. Application of this technique to drug screening might be beneficial in finding novel treatments preventing muscle atrophy and other diseases associated with any morphological change in cell shape.
测量肌管厚度是一种生理性且无偏倚的方法，用于筛选预防骨骼肌萎缩或诱导肥大的治疗性化合物。然而，由于肌管细胞群体的极端异质性，以及因此缺乏受干扰肌管的规则分布，准确估计细胞厚度往往颇具挑战性。在此，作者提出了一种通过测量细胞电阻抗来评估肌管厚度变化的新方法。他们证明，作为细胞黏附函数的电阻抗的定性和定量变化，与萎缩或肥大剂引起的肌管厚度变化密切相关。相反，药理学阻断肌管肥大可防止电阻抗变化。因此，电阻抗可作为肌管萎缩或肥大的可靠且敏感的生物标志物。将该技术应用于药物筛选，可能有助于找到预防肌肉萎缩和其他与细胞形态任何变化相关疾病的新疗法。
