Duchenne muscular dystrophy (DMD): a developmental disease
Please note that the room has changed for this seminar talk. It will now take place in the Ground Floor Conference Room of the Le Gros Clark Building.
Duchenne muscular dystrophy (DMD) is too often considered as an affection of male children. Symptoms appear in early childhood, with a diagnosis made around 4, a time where the amount of muscle damage is already significant, preventing early therapeutic interventions that could be more efficient at halting disease progression. Thus, there is a critical need to better define DMD onset as well as its first manifestations, which could help identify early disease biomarkers and novel therapeutic targets.
We have used human induced pluripotent stem cells (hiPSCs) from DMD patients to model embryonic/foetal skeletal myogenesis, and compared their differentiation dynamics to healthy control cells by a comprehensive multi-omics analysis.

Transcriptome and miRnome comparisons combined with protein analyses demonstrate that hiPSC skeletal muscle differentiation 1) mimics known DMD phenotypes at the differentiation endpoint; 2) homogeneously and robustly recapitulates key developmental steps – mesoderm, somite, skeletal muscle – which offers the possibility to explore dystrophin functions and find earlier disease biomarkers; and 3) that the skeletal muscle precursors cells obtained with, are compatible with high-throughput experiments, thus increasing the capability of drug screening.

Moreover, our data strongly argue for an early developmental manifestation of DMD whose onset is triggered at the somite stage before the entry into the skeletal muscle compartment. And we describe fibrosis as an intrinsic feature of skeletal muscle cells that also starts early during myogenesis. Dystrophin functions during development need to be reconsidered.

For more information on this talk or iStem’s visit to Oxford, please visit: www.onmc.ox.ac.uk/events/seminar-human-ipscs-dmd-onset-mechanisms-therapies-development
Date: 26 February 2020, 13:30 (Wednesday, 6th week, Hilary 2020)
Venue: Ground Floor Conference Room, Le Gros Clark Building, Science Area, South Parks Road, Oxford, OX1 3QX
Speaker: Christian Pinset (Centre for the Study of Stem Cells/ iStem)
Organising department: Department of Paediatrics
Organisers: Dr Jaclyn Nicole Le Grand (University of Oxford), Professor Carolyn Carr (DPAG, University of Oxford)
Organiser contact email address: nicole.legrand@paediatrics.ox.ac.uk
Host: Professor Carolyn Carr (DPAG, University of Oxford)
Part of: MDUK Oxford Neuromuscular Centre Seminars
Topics:
Booking required?: Not required
Audience: Members of the University only
Editor: Nicole Le Grand