• Tahnee L Kennedy, Kristy Swiderski, Kate T Murphy, Stefan M Gehrig, Claire L Curl, Chanchal Chandramouli, Mark A Febbraio, Lea M D Delbridge, René Koopman, and Gordon S Lynch.
• Basic and Clinical Myology Laboratory, Department of Physiology, The University of Melbourne, Melbourne, Victoria.
• Am. J. Pathol. 2016 Dec 1; 186 (12): 3246-3260.

AbstractDuchenne muscular dystrophy is a severe and progressive striated muscle wasting disorder that leads to premature death from respiratory and/or cardiac failure. We have previously shown that treatment of young dystrophic mdx and dystrophin/utrophin null (dko) mice with BGP-15, a coinducer of heat shock protein 72, ameliorated the dystrophic pathology. We therefore tested the hypothesis that later-stage BGP-15 treatment would similarly benefit older mdx and dko mice when the dystrophic pathology was already well established. Later stage treatment of mdx or dko mice with BGP-15 did not improve maximal force of tibialis anterior (TA) muscles (in situ) or diaphragm muscle strips (in vitro). However, collagen deposition (fibrosis) was reduced in TA muscles of BGP-15-treated dko mice but unchanged in TA muscles of treated mdx mice and diaphragm of treated mdx and dko mice. We also examined whether BGP-15 treatment could ameliorate aspects of the cardiac pathology, and in young dko mice it reduced collagen deposition and improved both membrane integrity and systolic function. These results confirm BGP-15's ability to improve aspects of the dystrophic pathology but with differing efficacies in heart and skeletal muscles at different stages of the disease progression. These findings support a role for BGP-15 among a suite of pharmacological therapies for Duchenne muscular dystrophy and related disorders.Copyright © 2016 American Society for Investigative Pathology. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

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