Another Step Forward For Muscle Stem Cells

Main Category: Muscular Dystrophy / ALS
Also Included In: Stem Cell Research
Article Date: 12 Jul 2008 - 1:00 PST

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Research by Dr Amy Wagers and her team at Harvard University, USA, has shown promise for the use of muscle stem cell as a therapy for conditions such as muscular dystrophy. The researchers successfully transplanted muscle stem cells from healthy mice into the muscles of mice that show symptoms similar to Duchenne muscular dystrophy.

Although this shows promise for the therapy of human muscle disease, there are many practical hurdles. In humans, avoiding immune rejection of transplanted cells and distributing the cells evenly throughout the muscles of the body would be a major challenge. This paper does however give us valuable information on the identification and isolation of muscle stem cells, which will allow us to learn more about these vital cells.

Dr Marita Pohlschmidt, Director of Research at the Muscular Dystrophy Campaign, commented: "Increasingly more research is being carried out to further the understanding of stem cell biology. The results reported by Dr Amy J Wagers and her team show that it is possible in an animal model to isolate muscle stem cells from a healthy adult mouse and transplant them successfully into a mouse with muscular dystrophy. Although stem cell technology is still in it's in infancy this is another step towards developing this technology into a viable treatment for people with muscle disease."

The research paper can be read at http://www.cell.com

More about the report can also be read at http://www.news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health

Muscular Dystrophy Campaign