Prof Lee Sweeney of the University of Pennsylvania will soon introduce a gene therapy approach to treat aged dogs who suffer muscular weakness. Elderly dogs who become progressively weaker need treatments so their owners can take the canines on walks. The therapy involves the injection of a genetically modified myostatin inhibitor that produces incredible muscular hypertrophy; the injection goes into the animal's liver.
From the Telegraph UK:
"An American professor is preparing to market a form of canine gene therapy, which would see dogs injected with substances which switch off the genes that regulate their muscle growth.
Prof Lee Sweeney, from the University of Pennsylvania, has pioneered research into gene transfer technology, a field in which poorly functioning and abnormal genes are manipulated, switched off or replaced.
Ten years ago he created "mighty mice" in the lab with enormous muscles and strength in old age. Now he says experiments on dogs have been so successful that he is preparing to market the treatments to owners of ageing pets across the United States.
He said: "We are now in the final stages of getting all the approvals to offer this through the veterinary hospital as a treatment to try to improve strength in pet dogs.
"As the dogs get weak their owners get upset that they can't walk around any more. So we're hoping that within the next year we will begin the era of genetic enhancement in dogs."
Under the therapy, dogs would be given an injection into the liver of an inhibitor which switches off the gene which produces myostatin, a protein which inhibits muscle growth in animals and humans. "
Sounds great, you or your vet injects the dog that's old and has trouble moving around and they can move like when they were younger. The muscles no longer age so dogs can move like they were still young again, even in their bone structure or respiratory system have deteriorated. It sounds great to humans too, and Dr. Sweeney says he is constantly being contacted by people who wanted to get whatever it was he was giving his "super-mice" which he developed before his latest development for dogs.
"He (Dr. Sweeney) gets between five and 10 emails a week from athletes, some from Britain, and so many phone calls that his secretary has stopped putting them through. And that is in a quiet week.
If he publishes an academic paper or does a media interview, a flurry of 50 or more calls and emails usually follows, as it did 10 years ago when he first revealed his 'mighty mice' to the world at a meeting of the American Society for Cell Biology – laboratory mice with enormous muscles that retained their strength and regenerative ability even when the animals reached old age.
Sweeney's super-strong rodents were the product of his pioneering research into gene transfer technology and the implications were clearly not lost on the athletes and coaches who got in touch, one of whom offered $100,000 for what the mice were getting.
Shockingly, Sweeney also received a request from a high school American football coach for his entire team to be genetically modified.
Sweeney told him what he is still telling everyone a decade later, that bulking up on gene therapy is not yet safe enough for humans and would require heavy-duty immune suppression. He always gets the same response.
"Even if I explain to them that to make it work might require all sorts of heroic measures, they basically say, 'Fine. I'll do it'. And if it's a matter of money, they'll get the money."
Some of them are from Europe," he says. "I get quite a few from the UK and Germany."
He says he would feel uneasy about passing on their names to the anti-doping authorities but is sufficiently concerned to have accepted a seat on the gene-doping panel of the World Anti-Doping Agency (Wada), who are funding eight research projects on gene-doping detection in a desperate attempt to stay ahead of the cheats.
Sweeney is bracing himself for another surge of calls and emails next year when his work moves from the laboratory to the commercial world with a muscle-building gene therapy for dogs."
Even though he knows that humans will use this even though it's designed for dogs he's going ahead and marketing it. The Telegraph sums up his breakthrough:
"But any breakthrough will inevitably be seized upon by dope cheats in the same way that clinical drugs such as steroids, human growth hormone and the red blood cell-boosting EPO soon found their way into kit bags. With the prospect of as yet undetectable, lifelong enhancement, how could any drug cheat resist?
As gene transfer technology enters the medical mainstream as a treatment for numerous diseases from blindness to cancer, scientists are agreed it is only a matter of time before it crosses over into sport.
Some predict that London 2012 could be the first genetically modified Olympic Games. Others say the Beijing Games may already have that dubious honour. "
Just great news, no wonder the Olympics, Tour De France and other international sports matter less and less, they aren't about how hard you can train, it's about who can get the best stuff and who can evade the testing. Good thing the "evil" Soviet bloc is gone, who knows what they would be doing to their athletes...(eye roll)
From the Telegraph UK:
"An American professor is preparing to market a form of canine gene therapy, which would see dogs injected with substances which switch off the genes that regulate their muscle growth.
Prof Lee Sweeney, from the University of Pennsylvania, has pioneered research into gene transfer technology, a field in which poorly functioning and abnormal genes are manipulated, switched off or replaced.
Ten years ago he created "mighty mice" in the lab with enormous muscles and strength in old age. Now he says experiments on dogs have been so successful that he is preparing to market the treatments to owners of ageing pets across the United States.
He said: "We are now in the final stages of getting all the approvals to offer this through the veterinary hospital as a treatment to try to improve strength in pet dogs.
"As the dogs get weak their owners get upset that they can't walk around any more. So we're hoping that within the next year we will begin the era of genetic enhancement in dogs."
Under the therapy, dogs would be given an injection into the liver of an inhibitor which switches off the gene which produces myostatin, a protein which inhibits muscle growth in animals and humans. "
Sounds great, you or your vet injects the dog that's old and has trouble moving around and they can move like when they were younger. The muscles no longer age so dogs can move like they were still young again, even in their bone structure or respiratory system have deteriorated. It sounds great to humans too, and Dr. Sweeney says he is constantly being contacted by people who wanted to get whatever it was he was giving his "super-mice" which he developed before his latest development for dogs.
"He (Dr. Sweeney) gets between five and 10 emails a week from athletes, some from Britain, and so many phone calls that his secretary has stopped putting them through. And that is in a quiet week.
If he publishes an academic paper or does a media interview, a flurry of 50 or more calls and emails usually follows, as it did 10 years ago when he first revealed his 'mighty mice' to the world at a meeting of the American Society for Cell Biology – laboratory mice with enormous muscles that retained their strength and regenerative ability even when the animals reached old age.
Sweeney's super-strong rodents were the product of his pioneering research into gene transfer technology and the implications were clearly not lost on the athletes and coaches who got in touch, one of whom offered $100,000 for what the mice were getting.
Shockingly, Sweeney also received a request from a high school American football coach for his entire team to be genetically modified.
Sweeney told him what he is still telling everyone a decade later, that bulking up on gene therapy is not yet safe enough for humans and would require heavy-duty immune suppression. He always gets the same response.
"Even if I explain to them that to make it work might require all sorts of heroic measures, they basically say, 'Fine. I'll do it'. And if it's a matter of money, they'll get the money."
Some of them are from Europe," he says. "I get quite a few from the UK and Germany."
He says he would feel uneasy about passing on their names to the anti-doping authorities but is sufficiently concerned to have accepted a seat on the gene-doping panel of the World Anti-Doping Agency (Wada), who are funding eight research projects on gene-doping detection in a desperate attempt to stay ahead of the cheats.
Sweeney is bracing himself for another surge of calls and emails next year when his work moves from the laboratory to the commercial world with a muscle-building gene therapy for dogs."
Even though he knows that humans will use this even though it's designed for dogs he's going ahead and marketing it. The Telegraph sums up his breakthrough:
"But any breakthrough will inevitably be seized upon by dope cheats in the same way that clinical drugs such as steroids, human growth hormone and the red blood cell-boosting EPO soon found their way into kit bags. With the prospect of as yet undetectable, lifelong enhancement, how could any drug cheat resist?
As gene transfer technology enters the medical mainstream as a treatment for numerous diseases from blindness to cancer, scientists are agreed it is only a matter of time before it crosses over into sport.
Some predict that London 2012 could be the first genetically modified Olympic Games. Others say the Beijing Games may already have that dubious honour. "
Just great news, no wonder the Olympics, Tour De France and other international sports matter less and less, they aren't about how hard you can train, it's about who can get the best stuff and who can evade the testing. Good thing the "evil" Soviet bloc is gone, who knows what they would be doing to their athletes...(eye roll)
6 comments:
if it's going to help someone then why not?!
You're right it will help someone, maybe lots of people. But you know if there is something like this that stops muscle deteroriation, switches that gene off, athletes are going to use it and abuse it.
Everything athletes abuse has been developed for other purposes.
Steroids, HGH and EPO were all developed fo help people suffering from some disease or ailment.
I'm all for developing things that make peoples' lives better, we just don't always know what else the drug etc can do.
very true, but why make few suffer, just because we are worried about overpaid boneheads?
case in point, right now as i type, i have an uncle layin in the hosp. waiting on a lung transplant. his disease is so rare they know literally nothing about it or what brings it on. machines are keeping him alive, he's at the top of the list but still. Stem Cell would help, ya know....ya just never know what will help. if some douche athlete wants to abuse it, then that's on them. if it could help even one person, then i say go for it!
you're right, and we don't need to act surprised when an athlete or many athletes abuse the stuff.
thank u baby cakes. some of these athletes suck.
i'm really surprised @ the deuce big time.
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