Mighty mice hold key to muscle-wasting disease

[picasso]

Mighty mice hold key to muscle-wasting disease

• A drug that builds up muscle in mice could be used to treat people suffering from diseases such as muscular dystrophy

THANKS to research on "mighty mice", the lives of people suffering from muscle-wasting diseases such as muscular dystrophy could be transformed. Two treatments that block a protein called myostatin, which slows muscle growth, are now in the pipeline.
The first approach, announced this week, aims to use a drug to mop up myostatin. Meanwhile a second method, which is already in clinical trials in people with muscular dystrophy, uses antibodies to disable the protein.
In 1997, researchers led by Se-Jin Lee of Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine in Baltimore, Maryland, engineered mice in which the gene for myostatin had been "knocked out". The animals grew muscles twice as big as normal. A defect in the myostatin gene was what caused a German toddler, whose story was widely publicised last year, to develop prodigious muscles.

 

[TheCrownedOne]

This is old news. Too bad follistatin isn't affordable, otherwise we'd be in business.

 

[picasso]

Actually, that news was just released. The science may be old, but the news that drugs are now in the pipeline is new. What does follistatin have to do with it? Is that what they are referring to?

 

[jomi822]

A defect in the myostatin gene was what caused a German toddler, whose story was widely publicised last year, to develop prodigious muscles.

what story is this? i cant find it but it sounds interesting. Id like to find my myostatin gene and knock it out of the picture

 

[foo.c]

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Wonder how long before this is a research chem?

 

[TheCrownedOne]

Nice find, Foo.c!