XXXVII Annual European Muscle Conference
This meeting, held in the wonderful setting of the Harry Potter associated Keble College, covered a broad ranging mix of biologists investigating the basic biology of muscle function through to clinicians investigating muscle diseases and treatments for muscle diseases.
Muscle disease highlights of the meeting included Professor John Sparrow, York, UK, describing the work his laboratory has been doing with fruit fly modelling the congenital myopathy mutations found in the human skeletal muscle alpha-actin gene (ACTA1). The fruit fly flight muscles provide a remarkable model system in which to study skeletal muscle diseases since the insects, if severely affected by the mutant protein, cannot fly, but as Professor Sparrow says “can still walk to work.”
Other muscle disease highlights of the meeting included a session on skeletal muscle diseases co-chaired by Professor Nigel Laing, (University of Western Australia) and Professor Caroline Sewry (Institute of Child Health, London UK). Professor Laing gave an update on his laboratory’s work on congenital myopathies - skeletal muscle myosin early onset distal myopathy (MPD1) and skeletal muscle alpha-actin-based myopathies (such as nemaline myopathy). Professor Sewry described the pathologies of the congenital myopathies. Professor Dieter Fürst (Bonn Germany) described the Filamin C protein aggregate myopathy, Dr Corinne Huchet-Cadiou (Nantes, France) altered intracellular calcium in dystrophic muscles. Dr Lars Larsson (Uppsala, Sweden) covered the myosin loss and other features of acute quadriplegic myopathy seen in intensive care patients
Finally in another session, Professor Dominic Wells(Imperial College, London, UK) updated the conference on the antisense oligo-nucleotide therapy clinical trials for Duchenne muscular dystrophy that he is part of.
Overall, this was an excellent meeting bringing together researchers investigating the fundamental biology of muscle and those interested in muscle diseases and their treatment.
The organisers of the conference are grateful for the support of the conference by the Muscular Dystrophy Campaign.
This report was written in collaboration with Professor Nigel Laing from the Western Australian Institute for Medical Research.
