CELLULAR AND MOLECULAR MECHANISMS OF MUSCLE REGENERATION

BACKGROUND: Muscle injuries are a common manifestation of exercise and non-mechanical factors such as drugs, genetic defects, and systemic diseases. Despite their clinical importance, the cellular and molecular mechanisms of muscle injury and repair are poorly understood, which hamper development of effective clinical interventions. OBJECTIVE: This review is an attempt to recognize basic principles of skeletal muscle regeneration process. METHODS: A thorough systematic review of articles on muscle injury and repair processes was conducted using three reliable search engines for biomedical literature as ScienceDirect, Scopus and PubMed. REVIEW: Following injury, rapid activation and differentiation of satellite cells is major cellular repair process. At the molecular levels, activation of dysferlin and MG53 proteins help in building the "repair cap" at injury site to initiate repair process. This event is followed by secretion of muscle myokines and subsequent infiltration of macrophages into muscle fibers, which remove cellular debris and activate other repair proteins and satellite cells. This review elaborates cellular and molecular mechanisms regulating these events following muscle injury. Effective therapeutic interventions to counter muscle injury related atrophy remain elusive. CONCLUSION: Altogether, this review proposes cellular and molecular targets to accelerate muscle regeneration process following mechanical and non-mechanical injuries. Further investigations are required to elucidate the pathways dictating muscle regeneration process following injury.