Preface

Skeletal muscle tissue accounts for almost half of the human body mass. Muscle contractions of the skeletal muscle enable the body to move and maintain homeostasis. Human health is markedly affected by any deterioration in the material, metabolic and contractile properties of skeletal muscle. Muscle wasting and weakness such as cachexia, atrophy and sarcopenia are characterized by marked decreases in the protein content, myonuclear number, muscle fiber size and muscle strength. To attenuate various forms of muscle wasting, many re‐ searchers have investigated exercise-based, supplemental and pharmacological approaches. Our circulatory system is modulated by the heart, lungs and vasculature. These components serve crucial roles in controlling blood and lymph flow and in the delivery of gases, hor‐ mones and essential nutrients (i.e. glucose, fat, or amino acids). Vascular smooth muscle cells (VSMCs) are the most numerous cell types in blood vessels, where they are located in the medial layer of the vascular wall. VSMCs serve critical regulatory roles in the blood ves‐ sels, particularly for vasoconstriction, vasodilatation and synthesis of vascular extracellular matrix. Vascular remodeling is adaptive alternating process of vascular wall architecture and is caused by various stimuli such as vascular injury, oxidative stress and hemodynamic stress. VSMCs and endothelial cells (ECs) compose the arteries and have essential roles in vascular remodeling in conjunction with inflammatory cells. During vascular remodeling, the infiltration of macrophages and monocytes, synthetic or contractile phenotypic changes of VSMCs and the EC dysfunction promote vascular diseases such as atherosclerosis.

In order to complete tissue regeneration, various cells (neuronal, skeletal, and smooth) inter‐ act coordinately with each other. This book, *Muscle Cell and Tissue - Current Status of Research Field*, deals with current progress and perspectives in a variety of topics on the skeletal and smooth muscle, stem cells, regeneration, disease or therapeutics. Novel applications for cell and tissue engineering including cell therapy, tissue models and disease pathology model‐ ing are introduced. This book also deals with the differentiation/de-differentiation process of vascular smooth muscle cells in health and disease. Furthermore, natural products to re‐ verse metabolic syndromes are descriptively reviewed. These chapters can be interesting for graduate students, teachers, physicians, executives and researchers in the field of molecular biology and regenerative medicine.

> **Professor Kunihiro Sakuma, PhD** Institute for Liberal Arts Tokyo Institute of Technology, Japan

**Section 1**

**Introduction**

**Section 1**
