News

Researchers at Japan’s Kobe University Graduate School of Medicine have successfully decoded a sugar molecule, providing an important step toward understanding a mechanism linked to muscular dystrophy (MD). The study, “Identification of a Post-translational Modification with Ribitol-Phosphate and Its Defect in Muscular Dystrophy,” was published in the journal…

University of Nottingham researchers at the Sir Peter Mansfield Imaging Centre (SPMIC) have been awarded a more than £1 million grant to develop a magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) technique that uses the body’s natural sodium ions to provide more advanced pictures of healthy and diseased tissue. MRI is used to diagnose and…

The only drugs currently recommended for people with Duchenne muscular dystrophy (DMD) are glucocorticoid corticosteroids, but many patients still do not receive such treatment. A review in the journal US Neurology underscores the benefits of deflazacort, a glucocorticoid used as an anti-inflammatory and immunosuppressant, demonstrating that the drug…

Ultragenyx, a biopharma dedicated to the development of investigational products for rare diseases, will fund the efforts of a team of scientists from Saint Louis University (SLU) to advance a treatment for muscular dystrophy, inspired by lead researcher Dr. Fran Sverdrup’s daughter, who was diagnosed with the disease. SLU’s Center…

Researchers from the University of Pittsburgh recently released key findings from a study which may hold important implications for novel therapies designed to treat patients with Duchenne muscular dystrophy (DMD). The study, “Twenty-Year Follow-Up of Newborn Screening for Patients with Muscular Dystrophy,” was published in the journal…

Los Angeles-based Capricor Therapeutics has been awarded nearly $3.4 million to support its Phase 1/2 HOPE-Duchenne clinical trial. The grant is from CIRM — the California Institute for Regenerative Medicine — as part of the CIRM 2.0 program, a joint initiative meant to advance the development of treatments based on stem cells for people…