OTTAWA, ON (June 26, 2003) - A research team from the Ottawa Health Research Institute (OHRI), led by Dr. Michael Rudnicki, has published a groundbreaking study that demonstrates how a novel population of adult stem cells resident in muscle tissue plays an important role in muscle regeneration.
For the first time, the research also identifies details of the molecular signals that direct these adult stem cells to form new muscle, offering hope for millions of people with neuromuscular disorders.
The Rudnicki team's findings are published in the June 27 issue of the prestigious scientific journal Cell.
This landmark research shows that a class of adult muscle stem cells, called CD45+ cells, play a natural role in regeneration when they receive signals in the form of a secreted protein known as Wnt. Wnt proteins are secreted in response to tissue damage and act to trigger the stem cells to divide and then develop into highly specialized muscle cells.
"Why is this important?" asks Dr. Rudnicki, who is a Professor of Medicine at the University of Ottawa. "A central question in the application of stem cells to repair damage has been 'what are the switches that trigger the stem cells to make new tissue of a specific type?' Now that this question has been answered for muscle tissue, we can exploit this knowledge to potentially benefit people with neuromuscular diseases such as muscular dystrophy or diseases that involve muscle wasting such as multiple sclerosis, ALS, and cancer." However, he cautions, clinical applications are still some time away.
A focus of future research will be to develop drugs that target the Wnt signaling pathway as new treatments for neuromuscular diseases and muscle injury.
The ability to instruct stem cells to become muscle cells also has future application in therapies to reverse the effects of aging. Aging humans lose muscle cells from the heart and from muscles throughout the body. While the ability to do this is still some years away the ability to send in cells to serve as replacements will be a valuable rejuvenation therapy.
The fact that muscle cells die will eventually even be exploitable to enhance human muscles. Any form of genetic engineering that has the effect of increasing efficiency or capacity of muscles will be deliverable by adding genetic modifications to stem cells. The fact that older muscle cells have died basically will provide an opening to bring in new cells which will have enhanced functionality.
By Randall Parker at 2003 June 29 07:32 PM Aging Reversal