Muscular Dystrophy in Mice Treated with Muscle from Mouse Embryonic Stem Cells
Muscular dystrophy (MD) is an inherited disease characterized by progressive weakness and degeneration of the skeletal muscles that control movement. Current treatments for MD aim to slow the disease's progression but can't cure it or completely halt its progression. One possible hope lies in replacing diseased muscles with new muscle cells, generated from embryonic stem cells (ESCs). However, scientists have had difficulty generating skeletal muscle from ESCs, due in part to a lack of useful ways to identify developing skeletal muscle amidst other cell types. Privately funded scientists have now developed such a method in mice, as well as another method to sort muscle cells from undifferentiated stem cells that could divide uncontrollably and produce tumors after transplantation. The scientists injected the mouse ESC–derived skeletal muscle cells into mice with an MD-like muscle-wasting condition. Tests showed that treated mice's muscles had an improved ability to contract, and treated mice fared better than untreated diseased mice on standard tests for muscle function. In the future, scientists hope to test the ability of human embryonic stem cell (hESC)–derived muscle cells to treat human MD. Nature advance online publication, laboratory of R.C.R. Perlingeiro. 2008 Jan 20.

http://stemcells.nih.gov/research/scilit/highlights/