Precision medicine approaches to muscle wasting conditions

• Research type

  Research Study

• Full title

  Muscle wasting tissue profiling using multi-omic techniques for target discovery, biomarker identification and the development of precision medicine approaches.

• IRAS ID

  349785

• Contact name

  Martin Philpott

• Contact email

  martin@caeruleus.bio

• Sponsor organisation

  Caeruleus Genomics Ltd

• Duration of Study in the UK

  2 years, 6 months, 1 days

• Research summary

  As we age, we naturally lose muscle mass and strength. In some people, this becomes severe and leads to a condition called sarcopenia. Sarcopenia increases the risk of frailty, falls, fractures, and illness, and can reduce quality of life. Despite its impact, there are currently no approved medicines to treat muscle loss, and no widely accepted tests to detect it early.
  Muscle is the largest organ in the body and is made up of many different cell types that work together. Studying all these cell types in detail—one cell at a time—is important to understand how muscle changes with age or disease. Current tools miss many of the complex features of muscle, including important variations in gene activity.
  We plan to use new technologies that can study individual muscle cells in detail. This will allow us to compare muscle from younger, healthy people to muscle from older or unwell individuals. Our goal is to find possible drug targets to treat muscle loss, and to discover markers in the blood that can help detect muscle problems earlier.
  To do this, we will use leftover muscle tissue (and blood samples, when available) that have been donated through UK, European, or US biobanks, or research organisations. All samples will be fully anonymised and will only be used if appropriate consent has already been given. Where possible, information such as age or health history will be included (without identifying anyone) to help us better understand the causes of muscle loss.
  

• REC name

  London - Stanmore Research Ethics Committee

• REC reference

  25/PR/0480

• Date of REC Opinion

  15 May 2025

• REC opinion

  Further Information Favourable Opinion