Gene expression profiling of skeletal muscles treated with a soluble activin type IIB receptor. Mus musculus

Inhibition of the myostatin signaling pathway is emerging as a promising therapeutic means to treat muscle wasting disorders. Activin type IIB receptor is the putative myostatin receptor, and a soluble activin receptor (ActRIIB-Fc) has been demonstrated to potently inhibit a subset of TGF-β family members including myostatin. In order to determine reliable and valid biomarkers for myostatin pathway inhibition, we assessed gene expression profiles for quadriceps muscles from mice treated with ActRIIB-Fc compared to mice genetically lacking myostatin and control mice. Overall design: RNA extracted from quadriceps muscles of four classes of two-month-old female mice were analyzed with Affymetrix microarrays: control mice, myostatin-null mice, mice treated with one dose of ActRIIB-Fc and mice treated with four doses of ActRIIB-Fc. An initial study used 3 mice from each class, and an independent follow-up study used 8 myostatin-null mice and 5 mice from each of the other 3 classes.