TABLE 2.

Advantages and limitations of synthetic biomaterials for skeletal muscle regeneration.

Synthetic polymers	Advantages	Disadvantages	Citations
PCL	High Young’s modulus, stiffness	Does not support cell proliferation or differentiation alone	Sundelacruz and Kaplan (2009), Kim et al. (2010), Sánchez-Cid et al. (2021)
	New muscle growth when coated with natural biomaterials	Long degradation times
PLGA	Mild support of differentiation	Lower elastic modulus when combined with natural biomaterials	Boateng et al. (2005), Aviss et al. (2010), Shin et al. (2015), Wang et al. (2021)
	Good differentiation when coated with natural materials	Acidic degradation products
PEG	Hydrophilic	Does not support proliferation or differentiation alone	Fuoco et al. (2015), Kutikov and Song (2015), Wang et al. (2019)
	New muscle growth when coated with biomaterials	Requires functionalization to degrade
	Addition of PEG has plasticizing effect on hard polymers
PLLA	Grows functional muscle in combination with other biomaterials	More successful with protein coating	Scime et al. (2009), Lee et al. (2012), Wolf et al. (2015), Fitzgerald et al. (2018)
	Recruits native SCs	Acidic degradation products
	Supports vascularization	Long degradation times
PGA	Hydrophilic	Does not induce vascularization	Saxena et al. (2001), Fuchs et al. (2003), Kamelger et al. (2004), Miranda et al. (2021)
		Rapid degradation
		Acidic degradation products
PDMS	Grows 2D skeletal muscle films	Ineffective without combining with other natural materials	Fujita et al. (2009), Shen et al. (2013), Mueller et al. (2021)
	Useful as a mold or patterned surface	Little in vivo research
		Does not degrade in vivo