MUSCLE stem cells have been discovered that not only make lots of muscle, but can also form other key components of muscle fibres such as connective tissue, blood vessels and nerves.
The cells, which are very rare and complicated to isolate, could one day be used to regenerate muscle in people with a range of disorders. But there’s one application that has Johnny Huard, the University of Pittsburgh researcher who found the cells, especially excited. “Our main goal is to alleviate muscle weakness in Duchenne muscular dystrophy,” he says. Duchenne is a fatal wasting disease caused by a fault in…
