Patient-Oriented In Vitro Studies in Duchenne Muscular Dystrophy: Validation of a 3D Skeletal Muscle Organoid Platform

Background: Three-dimensional skeletal muscle organoids (3D SkMO) are becoming of increasing interest for preclinical studies in Duchenne muscular dystrophy (DMD), provided that the used platform demonstrates the possibility to form functional and reproducible 3D SkMOs, to investigate on potential patient-related phenotypic differences. Methods: In this study, we employed fibrin-based 3D skeletal muscle organoids derived from immortalized myogenic precursors of DMD patients carrying either a stop codon mutation in exon 59 or a 48–50 deletion. We compared dystrophic lines with a healthy wild-type control (HWT) by assessing microtissue formation ability, contractile function at multiple timepoints along with intracellular calcium dynamics via calcium imaging, as well as expression of myogenic markers. Results: We found patient-specific structural and functional differences in the early stages of 3D SkMO development. Contractile force, measured as both single twitch and tetanic responses, was significantly lower in dystrophic 3D SkMOs compared to HWT, with the most pronounced differences observed at day 7 of differentiation. However, these disparities diminished over time under similar culturing conditions and in the absence of continuous nerve-like stimulation, suggesting that the primary deficit lies in delayed myogenic maturation, as also supported by gene expression analysis. Conclusions: Our results underline that, despite the initial maturation delay, DMD muscle precursors retain the capacity to form functional 3D SkMOs once this intrinsic lag is overcome. This suggests a critical role of dystrophin in early myogenic development, while contraction-induced stress and/or an inflammatory microenvironment are essential to fully recapitulate dystrophic phenotypes in 3D SkMOs.