Scientists have discovered why ageing stem cells lose their ability to repair and replace muscle.
They traced the effect to increased activation of a specific signalling pathway known as JAK/STAT.
Blocking the pathway with drugs could reduce some of the effects of ageing and pave the way to new treatments for muscle-wasting diseases, researchers believe.
The JAK/STAT pathway transmits information to cells from surrounding tissue.
Lead scientist Professor Michael Rudnicki, from the University of Ottawa in Canada, said: “What’s really exciting to our team is that when we used specific drugs to inhibit the JAK/STAT pathway, the muscle stem cells in old animals behaved the same as those found in young animals.
“These inhibitors increased the older animals’ ability to repair injured muscle and to build new tissue.”
Higher activity of the pathway alters the way muscle stem cells divide, said the researchers whose findings appear in the journal Nature Medicine.
As a result, more of them commit to becoming muscle fibre and fewer produce daughter stem cells which continue to regenerate. This leads to less capacity to repair and rebuild muscle tissue.
Prof Rudnicki’s team is now exploring the potential of drugs that inhibit JAK/STAT to treat diseases such as muscular dystrophy.
However, the drugs used in the research are commonly employed in chemotherapy and highly toxic. The scientists are looking for less toxic molecules that have the same effect.
Source Article from https://uk.news.yahoo.com/drugs-could-help-muscle-repair-170321273.html
Drugs 'could help muscle repair'
No comments:
Post a Comment