Update on Myostatin Gene Therapy
It wasn't all that long ago that scientists linked myostatin to muscle growth, and started to think about therapies for age-related muscle loss and injuries. Here, more news on that research via EurekAlert: "researchers injected mice with a gene therapy vector containing myostatin propeptide - a protein that blocks the activity of the muscle-growth inhibitor myostatin - three weeks prior to experimentally damaging the mice's skeletal muscles. Four weeks after skeletal muscle injury, the investigators observed an enhancement of muscle regeneration in the gene-therapy treated mice compared to the non-gene-therapy treated control mice. There also was significantly less fibrous scar tissue in the skeletal muscle of the gene-therapy treated mice compared to the control mice. ... we expect that gene-therapy treated cells will continue to overproduce myostatin propeptide for at least two years."
Link: http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2006-06/uopm-js060206.php