Therapeutic potential of skeletal muscle plasticity and slow muscle programming for muscular dystrophy and related muscle conditions

Abstract

Duchenne muscular dystrophy (DMD) is a devastating life-limiting disease causing progressive and severe muscle wasting in boys and young men. It is simply unacceptable that ~30 years after the discovery of the culprit protein, dystrophin, there is still no cure or effective treatment. Dystrophic muscles are fragile, injury prone and compromised in their regenerative capacity. Interestingly, in DMD and in two well-characterised murine models of the disease (mdx and dko mice), fast muscle fibres are more susceptible to damage and pathological progression than slow muscle fibres, which are resistant to damage and relatively spared. Therefore, therapies that promote a slower, more oxidative phen..