Growing Muscle and Strengthening Bone in Mice with a Follistatin-Like Molecule

In today's research materials, the authors report on the use of follistatin-like molecules to enhance bone density and increase muscle mass in mice. Myostatin and follistatin are well known to control muscle growth, and are consequently among the most promising targets for near future gene therapies. Either inhibition of myostatin, which can be achieved via antibody therapies in addition to gene therapies, or upregulation of follistatin can be used to deliver increased muscle growth in mammals. There are natural myostatin loss of function mutants in many species, including a few humans, and a range of heavily muscled engineered lineages in mice, dogs, and the like. There is robust evidence for this alteration to be essentially beneficial, and it does in fact modestly increase life span in mice in addition to the direct benefits relating to muscle mass. While additional muscle growth at any age sounds quite desirable, the main reason for considering this sort of therapy is to slow or perhaps turn back to some degree the characteristic loss of muscle mass and strength that occurs with advancing age. This happens to everyone, and is given the name sarcopenia. While targeting myostatin or follistatin seems likely to be effective to some degree, and reliably effective if the animal data is any guide, it doesn't address the underlying causes. It is a compensatory approach only, and even the highly effective compensatory approaches eventually run into the wall of ever-increas...
Source: Fight Aging! - Category: Research Authors: Tags: Medicine, Biotech, Research Source Type: blogs