text: The term muscle tissue engineering, while it is a subset of the much larger discipline, tissue engineering, was first coined in 1988 when Herman Vandenburgh, a surgeon, cultured avian myotubes in collagen-coated culture plates. This started a new era of in vitro tissue engineering. The ideal was officially adopted in 1988 in Vandenburgh's publication titled Maintenance of Highly Contractile Tissue-Cultured Avian Skeletal Myotubes in Collagen Gel. In 1989, the same group determined that mechanical stimulation of myoblasts in vitro facilitates engineered skeletal muscle growth.