The muscular dystrophies (MD) are a group of more than 30 genetic diseases characterized by progressive weakness and degeneration of the skeletal muscles that control movement. Some forms of MD are seen in infancy or childhood, while others may not appear until middle age or later. The disorders differ in terms of the distribution and extent of muscle weakness (some forms of MD also affect cardiac muscle), age of onset, rate of progression, and pattern of inheritance.
Muscles that ache after a hard workout usually don't hurt for long, thanks to stem cells that rush to the injured site along "collagen highways" within the muscle and repair the damaged tissue.
CRISPR-Cas9 is frequently used to alter the genome by researching and editing disease-related genes. However, this approach is coupled with undesirable side effects including mutations and toxicity.
Mutations of the gene encoding dystrophins have long been known to cause the debilitating muscle-wasting disease DMD, which affects one in every 5,000 boys born. People with the condition will usually only live into their 20s or 30s.
A team of Purdue University scientists led by Shihuan Kuang has received a $2.5 million grant from the National Institutes of Health to define the role of lipid droplets in muscle stem cell function, a study with implications in both humans and livestock.
Scientists at the National Institutes of Health and their co-workers reported that DUX4, a toxic protein produced by the body, might just be the reason for two completely different rare genetic disorders.
Among the most promising areas of scientific inquiry is the study of the human microbiome and its effect on health. To fuel more rapid progress in this field, Andrea and Donald Goodman and Renee and Meyer Luskin have made a $20 million gift to establish the UCLA Goodman–Luskin Microbiome Center.
Using high-resolution cryo-electron microscopy (cryo-EM), UAB researchers determined the structure of amyloid fibers formed by the protein hnRNPDL-2, which has been linked to limb-girdle muscular dystrophy type 3 and concluded that the protein’s inability to form amyloid fibers, rather than aggregation, would be the cause of the disease.
An international consortium co-led by Vanderbilt University Medical Center immunogeneticist Rubén Martínez-Barricarte, PhD, has discovered a new genetic disorder that causes immunodeficiency and profound susceptibility to opportunistic infections including life-threatening fungal pneumonia.
Researchers at UF Scripps Biomedical Research have created a potential treatment for a major factor in the development of ALS and dementia that functions by removing disease-causing RNA segments.
The knowledge of what can be inherited from parents and how their life experiences impact children could be completely rewritten if a fundamental finding concerning a factor driving healthy development in embryos were made.
To celebrate National DNA Day 2022, News-Medical speaks to Jonas Korlach, Chief Scientific Officer of PacBio.
Vesicles secreted from human heart cells may repair damaged tissue and prevent lethal heart rhythm disorders, according to a new study from investigators in the Smidt Heart Institute at Cedars-Sinai.
Mutations that cause muscle atrophy can be corrected using the CRISPR-Cas9 gene-editing tool.
A clinical trial at UC Davis Health and six other sites showed that a cellular therapy offers promise for patients with late-stage Duchenne muscular dystrophy (DMD), a rare genetic disorder causing muscle loss and physical impairments in young people.
Experts at Children’s National Hospital have created a new pre-clinical gene therapy for the rare condition limb-girdle muscular dystrophy (LGMD) 2B.
An international, multidisciplinary team of researchers from the Translational Synthetic Biology Laboratory at Pompeu Fabra University (Barcelona, Spain), led by Dr. Marc Güell, has published an article in the scientific journal Nature Communications.
Researchers have created a recipe for turning skin cells into primitive muscle-like cells that can be sustained indefinitely in the laboratory.
Results of a compassionate-use study released in STEM CELLS Translational Medicine show promising results for treating muscular dystrophies with mesenchymal stem cells (MSCs) derived from Wharton's jelly (WJ), a substance found in the umbilical cord.
Researchers from UT Southwestern used a new kind of gene therapy to successfully treat mice with Duchenne muscular dystrophy (DMD), distinctively employing CRISPR-Cas9-based tools to restore a large section of the dystrophin protein missing in several DMD patients.
As the name implies, induced pluripotent stem cells can become any type of cell in our body, and scientists have evidence that when they prompt them to become muscle progenitor cells they can help restore the sometimes debilitating muscle loss that happens with age.