The race is on for muscle-enhancing therapies

The key to extraordinary muscle growth is inhibiting the gene that expresses myostatin, which blocks the growth of skeletal muscle. And now there's a race among a group of drug developers to bring a new therapy to market that can do just that--helping people who suffer from muscle loss for a broad range of reasons, including aging and muscular dystrophy. Wyeth and Amgen are both in the running, along with the much smaller Acceleron Pharma in Cambridge, MA. Acceleron has made headlines for its work with the Belgian blue, a white bull with enormous muscles.

The science in these new programs dates to a discovery by Se-Jin Lee at Johns Hopkins that muscle-bound mice lacked the myostatin gene. Since then, other proteins have been linked to the same process, and Acceleron is advancing a fusion molecule that apparently works on more than one level in blocking the body's natural obstacles to muscle growth. In animal studies completed by Acceleron, mice injected with the fusion molecule experienced muscle growth of 30 percent to 60 percent.

- read the report from MIT Technology Review

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