Improving muscle function and recovery after injury and in aging

Loss of muscle mass and function is commonly seen in patients with chronic inflammatory diseases and is the major clinical feature of various neuromuscular diseases, such as muscular dystrophies and myopathies. To date, most neuromuscular diseases remain incurable and available therapies to extend life span and improve quality of life are limited. Remarkably, most mechanisms implicated in these pathologies largely overlap with mechanisms activated during healthy muscle regeneration. My research aims to understand the complex biology underlying healthy muscle repair and identify what fails in muscle pathologies. There is much left to discover but our research already identified a previously unknown mechanism that coordinates how different cells communicate during muscle regeneration and that is aberrantly activated in muscular diseases. We are developing ways of manipulating this mechanism as potential treatments for neuromuscular diseases. We are also exploring how these approaches could be further used to improve muscle function during aging and in a variety of chronic diseases, such as diabetes and cancer.