Copyright 2005 Nationwide News Pty Limited
The Australian
September 8, 2005 Thursday All-round Country Edition
SECTION: LOCAL; Pg. 7
LENGTH: 356 words
HEADLINE: Muscling for body repairs
SOURCE: MATP
BYLINE: Leigh Dayton Science writer

FISH do it. Lizards do it -- and now researchers in Italy claim people can regrow their ageing, damaged or diseased muscles.

"Regeneration can be enhanced in mammals. We're not stuck with what we've got," says molecular biologist Nadia Rosenthal, who predicts that regeneration therapy could be available within a decade.

By encouraging the body to do its own repairs, it may be possible to sidestep stem-cell therapy, the controversial and scientifically complex introduction of precursor cells that are able to become muscle cells.

The key is a naturally occurring protein, a growth factor known as mIGF-1, says Dr Rosenthal, who was formerly with Harvard University in Boston, Massachusetts, and is now head of the Mouse Biology Unit at the European Molecular Biology Laboratory near Rome.

Speaking at a meeting of the International Society of Developmental Biologists in Sydney yesterday, Dr Rosenthal said mIGF-1 treatments -- in either soluble oral or intravenous forms -- would be part of combination therapies used to treat people with heart disease or debilitating diseases such as muscular dystrophy (MD) and amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS).

ALS is the often fatal muscle-wasting disease that crippled renowned astrophysicist Stephen Hawking.

The protein may also be used as a dietary supplement to help prevent muscle wasting among older people whose levels of mIGF-1 drop significantly with age.

"Of course nothing substitutes for exercise -- it increases mIGF-1," Dr Rosenthal said.

She said research with a special strain of super-muscled rodents, "Schwarzenegger mice", has shown how mIGF-1 acts to restore the heart and skeletal muscle tissue.

Dr Rosenthal and her colleagues had previously found that mIGF-1 induces muscles to send a distress signal when they are injured.

In response, certain types of rejuvenating stem cells race to the site.

Her new findings, revealed yesterday, show mIGF-1 does this by reducing "impediments to effective regeneration", she says.

For instance, when the protein induces muscles to send distress signals, they interact with at least two biochemical pathways.