Overview
The CRG 192
Our clinical research group is a unique initiative in Germany dedicated to study the mechanisms that underlie alterations in size and function of skeletal muscle.
Muscle wasting can readily be observed in chronic diseases like cancer or heart failure. It is also a common phenomenon after inactivity or treatment in intensive care units. Muscular dystrophies are a group of untreatable devastating diseases which lead to progressive decline of muscle function in young people.
We want to know why hibernating animals survive months of inactivity without any obvious loss of muscle function. We want to study the role of myostatin, a substance that increases muscle growth, in dysferlin-deficient muscular dystrophies. We want to inhibit growth of rhabdomyosarcoma, a childhood cancer of skeletal muscle. We study why muscle sometimes enormously increases in size.
The German Research Foundation (www.dfg.de) has recognized the medical, scientific and economic importance of this research field and supports a clinical research group from summer 2007 on for a period of three years. Physicians and internationally well recognized basic scientists who rarely communicate with each other work together on new treatment strategies.
