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Cardiac and Skeletal Muscle Pathology in the D2/mdx Mouse Model and Caveats Associated with the Quantification of Utrophin

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Muscular Dystrophy Therapeutics

Part of the book series: Methods in Molecular Biology ((MIMB,volume 2587))

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Abstract

Duchenne muscular dystrophy (DMD) (the most common form of muscular dystrophy) is caused by a lack of dystrophin protein. Currently, although many therapeutic strategies are under investigation, there is no cure for DMD and unfortunately, patients succumb to respiratory and/or cardiac failure in their second or third decade of life. Preclinical work has focused on the mouse model C57BL/10ScSn-Dmdmdx/J (BL10/mdx ), which does not exhibit a robust pathophenotype. More recently, the D2.B10-Dmdmdx/J (D2/mdx ) mouse has been utilized, which presents a more severe pathology and therefore more closely mimics the human pathophenotype, particularly in the heart. Here, we outline important considerations when utilizing the D2/mdx model by highlighting the differences between these models in addition to describing histological and immunohistochemical methods utilized in Kennedy et al. (Mol Ther Methods Clin Dev 11:92–105, 2018) for both cardiac and skeletal muscle, which can quantify these differences. These considerations are particularly important when investigating treatment strategies that may be affected by regeneration; such is the case for upregulation of the dystrophin paralogue, utrophin.

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Change history

  • 02 March 2023

    The corresponding author of the chapter informed that he realised the reference to Kennedy (2018) paper was not included in Figure 1 legend, which needs to be added for potential copyright reasons.

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Acknowledgement

As Kennedy et al. [1] referenced in Fig. 1, the work flow described there was used in a study performed at the University of Oxford, under Prof. Kay Davies. Original experiments were funded by the MRC.

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Correspondence to Hannah F. Dugdale .

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© 2023 The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Science+Business Media, LLC, part of Springer Nature

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Kennedy, T.L., Dugdale, H.F. (2023). Cardiac and Skeletal Muscle Pathology in the D2/mdx Mouse Model and Caveats Associated with the Quantification of Utrophin. In: Maruyama, R., Yokota, T. (eds) Muscular Dystrophy Therapeutics. Methods in Molecular Biology, vol 2587. Humana, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-0716-2772-3_4

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-0716-2772-3_4

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  • Publisher Name: Humana, New York, NY

  • Print ISBN: 978-1-0716-2771-6

  • Online ISBN: 978-1-0716-2772-3

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