Tag Archive for: Novak

muscle cells

Experimental model mimics early-stage myogenic deficit in boys with DMD

muscle cells

Muscle regeneration marked by incorporation of muscle stem cell nuclei (green) in the myofibers (red) in dystrophic muscles with low TGFβ level (upper image), but not with high TGFβ level (lower image). Inflammatory and other nuclei are labeled blue.

Boys with Duchenne muscular dystrophy (DMD) experience poor muscle regeneration, but the precise reasons for this remain under investigation. An experimental model of severe DMD that experiences a large spike in transforming growth factor-beta (TGFβ) activity after muscle injury shows that high TGFβ activity suppresses muscle regeneration and promotes fibroadipogenic progenitors (FAPs). This leads to replacement of the damaged muscle fibers by calcified and connective tissue, compromising muscle structure and function. While blocking FAP buildup provides a partial solution, a Children’s National Hospital study team identifies correcting the muscle micro-environment caused by high TGFβ as a ripe therapeutic target.

The team’s study was published online March 26, 2020, in JCI Insight.

DMD is a chronic muscle disease that affects 1 in 6,200 young men in the prime of their lives. The disorder, caused by genetic mutations leading to the inability to produce dystrophin protein, leads to ongoing muscle damage, chronic inflammation and poor regeneration of lost muscle tissue. The patients experience progressive muscle wasting, lose the ability to walk by the time they’re teenagers and die prematurely due to cardiorespiratory failure.

The Children’s National team finds for the first time that as early as preadolescence (3 to 4 weeks of age), their experimental model of severe DMD disease showed clear signs of the type of spontaneous muscle damage, regenerative failure and muscle fiber loss seen in preadolescent boys who have DMD.

“In boys, the challenge due to muscle loss exists from early in their lives, but had not been mimicked previously in experimental models,” says Jyoti K. Jaiswal, MSc, Ph.D., principal investigator in the Center for Genetic Medicine Research at Children’s National, and the study’s co-senior author. “TGFβ is widely associated with muscle fibrosis in DMD, when, in fact, our work shows its role in this disease process is far more significant.”

Research teams have searched for experimental models that replicate the sudden onset of symptoms in boys who have DMD as well as its complex progression.

“Our work not only offers insight into the delicate balance needed for regeneration of skeletal muscle, but it also provides quantitative information about muscle stem cell activity when this balanced is disturbed,” says Terence A. Partridge, Ph.D., principal investigator in the Center for Genetic Medicine Research at Children’s National, and the study’s co-senior author.

This schematic depicts the fate of injured myofibers in healthy or dystrophic muscle

This schematic depicts the fate of injured myofibers in healthy or dystrophic muscle (WT or mdx experimental models) that maintain low TGFβ level, compared with D2-mdx experimental models that experience a large increase in TGFβ level. As the legend shows, various cells are involved in this regenerative response.

“The D2-mdx experimental model is a relevant one to use to investigate the interplay between inflammation and muscle degeneration that is seen in humans with DMD,” adds Davi A.G. Mázala, co-lead study author.  “This model faithfully recapitulates many features of the complex disease process seen in humans.”

Between 3 to 4 weeks of age in the experimental models of severe DMD disease, the level of active TGFβ spiked up to 10-fold compared with models with milder disease. Intramuscular injections of an off-the-shelf drug that inhibits TGFβ signaling tamped down the number of FAPs, improving the muscle environment by lowering TGFβ activity.

“This work lays the foundation for studies that could lead to future therapeutic strategies to improve patients’ outcomes and lessen disease severity,” says James S. Novak, Ph.D., principal investigator in Children’s Center for Genetic Medicine Research, and co-lead study author. “Ultimately, our goal is to improve the ability of patients to continue to maintain muscle mass and regenerate muscle.”

In addition to Mázala, Novak, Jaiswal and Partridge, Children’s National study co-authors include Marshall W. Hogarth; Marie Nearing; Prabhat Adusumalli; Christopher B. Tully; Nayab F. Habib; Heather Gordish-Dressman, M.D.; and Yi-Wen Chen, Ph.D.

Financial support for the research described in this post was provided by the National Institutes of Health under award Nos. T32AR056993, R01AR055686 and U54HD090257; Foundation to Eradicate Duchenne; Muscular Dystrophy Association under award Nos. MDA295203, MDA480160 and MDA 477331; Parent Project Muscular Dystrophy; and Duchenne Parent Project – Netherlands.

macrophage

Improving treatment success for Duchenne muscular dystrophy

macrophage

Macrophages, white blood cells involved in inflammation, readily take up a new medicine for Duchenne muscular dystrophy and promote its sustained delivery to regenerating muscle fibers long after the drug has disappeared from circulation.

Chronic inflammation plays a crucial role in the sustained delivery of a new type of muscular dystrophy drug, according to an experimental model study led by Children’s National Health System.

The study, published online Oct. 16, 2017 in Nature Communications, details the cellular mechanisms of morpholino antisense drug delivery to muscles. Macrophages, white blood cells involved in inflammation, readily take up a new medicine for Duchenne muscular dystrophy (DMD) and promote its sustained delivery to regenerating muscle fibers long after the drug has disappeared from circulation.

Until recently, the only approved medicines for DMD targeted its symptoms, rather than the root genetic cause. However, in 2016 the Food and Drug Administration approved the first exon-skipping medicine to restore dystrophin protein expression in muscle: Eteplirsen, an antisense phosphorodiamidate morpholino oligomer (PMO). The drug had shown promise in preclinical studies but had variable and sporadic results in clinical trials.

The Children’s National study adds to the understanding of how this type of medicine targets muscle tissue and suggests a path to improve treatments for DMD, which is the most common and severe form of muscular dystrophy and currently has no cure, explains study co-leader James S. Novak, Ph.D., a principal investigator in Children’s Center for Genetic Medicine Research.

Because the medication vanishes from the blood circulation within hours after administration, Children’s research efforts have focused on the mechanism of delivery to muscle and on ways to increase its cellular uptake – and, by extension, its effectiveness. However, researchers understand little about how this medication actually gets delivered to muscle fibers or how the disease pathology impacts this process, knowledge that could offer new ways of boosting both its delivery and effectiveness, says Terence Partridge, Ph.D., study co-leader and principal investigator in Children’s Center for Genetic Medicine Research.

To investigate this question, Novak, Partridge and colleagues used an experimental model of DMD that carries a version of the faulty DMD gene that, like its human counterparts, destroys dystrophin expression. To track the route of the PMO into muscle fibers, they labeled it with a fluorescent tag. The medicine traveled to the muscle but only localized to patches of regenerating muscle where it accumulated within the infiltrating macrophages, immune cells involved in the inflammatory response that accompanies this process. While PMO is rapidly cleared from the blood, the medication remained in these immune cells for up to one week and later entered muscle stem cells, allowing direct transport into regenerating muscle fibers. By co-administering the PMO with a traceable DNA nucleotide analog, the research team was able to define the stage during the regeneration process that promotes heightened uptake by muscle stem cells and efficient dystrophin expression in muscle fibers.

“These macrophages appear to extend the period of availability of this medication to the satellite cells and muscle fibers at these sites,” Partridge explains. “Since the macrophages are acting as long-term storage reservoirs for prolonged delivery to muscle fibers, they could possibly represent new therapeutic targets for improving the uptake and delivery of this medicine to muscle.”

Future research for this group will focus on testing whether macrophages might be used as efficient delivery vectors to transport eteplirsen to the muscle, which would avert the rapid clearance currently associated with intravenous delivery.

“Understanding exactly how different classes of exon-skipping drugs are delivered to muscle could open entirely new possibilities for improving future therapeutics and enhancing the clinical benefit for patients,” Novak adds.

Muscular Dystrophy Association awards grants to two Children’s National scientists

Marshall Hogarth, Ph.D

Marshall Hogarth, Ph.D

James Novak, Ph.D.

James Novak, Ph.D.

Two Children’s National Health System research scientists, Marshall Hogarth, Ph.D. and James Novak, Ph.D., have received Post-Doctoral Development Grants from the Muscular Dystrophy Association (MDA) as part of funding awarded to young, rising researchers who are poised to become independent investigators.

Over the next three years, Hogarth and Novak will be allotted $180,000 each to underwrite their individual research projects.

Hogarth’s research is focused on limb-girdle muscular dystrophy (LGMD), a disease which presents as muscle weakness when patients are in their late teens before rapidly progressing to severe debilitation. The MDA grant will allow Hogarth to continue his research investigating the replacement of muscle with fatty tissue and the role this plays in the late onset and subsequent progression of LGMD in patients.

Novak focuses mainly on researching Duchenne Muscular Dystrophy (DMD), a severely debilitating form of MD, that leads to progressive muscle weakness and respiratory and cardiac failure. Currently, the only Food and  Drug Administration (FDA)  approved treatment for DMD is exon-skipping. The MDA grant will support Novak’s study of the mechanisms that regulate the delivery of exon-skipping drugs in muscle, in order to identify new therapeutic targets and improve drug efficacy for patients with DMD.

While Hogarth and Novak focus on different aspects of neuromuscular disease, both look forward to making significant contributions that lead to overall improvements in the treatment of patients impacted by muscular dystrophy.