Table 2.

Overview of the advanced in vitro models of NMJ and their applications for drug testing and disease modeling.

Muscle source	Neuron source	Special features	Validation of NMJ function	Disease model	Drug testing	Ref
Rat	Rat	Compartmentalized, glial cells	No	No	No	Southam et al., 2013 [43]
Mouse C2C12	Mouse	Compartmentalized	No	No	No	Park et al., 2013 [44]
Mouse	Mouse	Compartmentalized	Glutamate stimulation, drug response	No	TTX	Zahavi et al., 2015 [45]
Human	human NSC, iPSCs	Compartmentalized, BioMEMs	Electrical stimulation, drug response	No	TC, BoNT, BTX	Santhanam et al., 2018 [46]
Mouse C2C12	Mouse, ESCs	3D skeletal tissue, cantilevers	Glutamate stimulation, drug response	No	TC	Morimoto et al., 2013 [54]
Rat	Rat	Cantilevers, photodetector	Glutamate stimulation, drug response	No	TC	Smith et al., 2013 [56]
Human	Human ESCs	3D culture	Glutamate stimulation	MG	TC, BoT, WTX	Afshar Bakooshli et al., 2019 [57]
Human	Human ESCs	Optogenetic	Optical stimulation	MG	PYR	Steinbeck et al., 2016 [59]
Mouse C2C12	Mouse ESCs	Compartmentalized, 3D, optogenetic	Optical stimulation, drug response	No	BTX	Uzel et al., 2016 [60]
Human	Human iPSCs	Compartmentalized, 3D, optogenetic, automated	Optical stimulation, drug response	MG	BTX	Vila et al., 2019 [62]
Human iPSCs	Human iPSCs	Compartmentalized, optogenetic	Optical stimulation, drug response	ALS	BTX, rapamycin, bosutinib	Osaki et al., 2018 [61]

ALS: amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, ATX: Agatoxin, BoNT: Botulinum toxin, TC: Tubocurarine, ESC: embryonic stem cells, iPSCs: induced pluripotent stem cells, MG: myasthenia gravis, NSC: Neural stem cells, PYR: pyridostigmine; TTX: Tetrodotoxin.