Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: THURSDAY, June 28, 1990 TAG: 9006280064
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A6 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE: NEW YORK LENGTH: Short
The injections went into the biceps, making the new work the first to show safety and feasibility for treating a large muscle, the Muscular Dystrophy Association said.
But Dr. George Karpati of the Montreal Neurological Institute, who led the research team, said it will take months to find out whether the experimental therapy succeeds in improving muscle strength.
The experimental procedure is aimed at Duchenne muscular dystrophy, a genetic muscle-destroying disease that disables in childhood and usually kills in young adulthood from destruction of respiratory muscles.
In the treatment, immature muscle cells called myoblasts are injected into a patient's muscle. The hope is that the myoblasts will supply muscle fibers with a gene to produce dystrophin, a protein the fibers lack. Loss of this protein leads to the disease.
Earlier this month, researchers said the procedure spurred dystrophin production in a patient's big toe.
Karpati said the new experiment was on a larger scale, involving 50 to 60 injections into a larger muscle, and delivering 60 million myoblasts throughout each treated bicep.
One patient was treated in April and two others later, Karpati said. The boys are ages 6 and 8.
The myoblasts were generated from muscle samples, no bigger than a pencil eraser, taken from the boys' fathers, he said.
by CNB