There will be a benefit for a Berwick woman diagnosed with Limb Girdle Muscular Dystrophy(LGMD)Saturday, June 15. The benefit will help assist in getting her a wheelchair accessible van. There will be food, bake sale, raffle, auction, etc. The organizers are in need of any type of donations: items for the raffle, musicians to perform, items to auction, sweets for the bake sale, bottled water, canned soda, and/or monetary donations. The organizers have some items to auction already including signed sports items by football stars, flat screen TV, his & her bikes. Click here to view the benefit on Facebook. Jennifer DeHart Sons is a single mom and is wheelchair bound for the most part. She can do things for herself as long as it can be done from her chair. Jennifer needs help with necessities in life that most people take for granted. She needs help with getting in and out of her chair, in and out of bed, on and off the toilet, in and out the car. Her senior year in high school she was an active regular teenager. Routine blood work showed abnormalities. The doctors diagnosed her in 1994 with a muscle disease called Polymyositis, which … Continue reading →

NEW YORK (AP) -- Shares of Sarepta Therapeutics Inc. fell Thursday after the drug developer forecast a larger-than-expected loss in 2013. Sarepta has no approved products and is studying a drug called eteplirsen as a treatment for Duchenne muscular dystrophy, a rare genetic disease that causes increasing muscle weakness. It is also researching a treatment for the deadly Marburg virus under an agreement with the U.S. Department of Defense. The Cambridge, Mass., company the company took a bigger loss in the fourth quarter because of a charge related to the increasing value of its stock. Sarepta lost $62.1 million, or $2.36 per share, in the latest quarter. That included a $51.8 million charge related to stock warrants. The company reported a loss of $1.4 million, or 6 cents per share, in the year-ago quarter. Revenue fell to $7.3 million from $13.6 million Analysts were expecting a loss of 27 cents per share and $7.1 million in revenue, according to FactSet. Companies often take charges when their stock rapidly increases in value to reflect greater liabilities. Sarepta's stock price rose more than fourfold in 2012 as it reported positive trial data for eteplirsen. The shares finished the year at $23.79 after … Continue reading →

Mar. 7, 2013 Researchers at Johns Hopkins have established a high-efficiency cell-cell fusion system, providing a new model to study how fusion works. The scientists showed that fusion between two cells is not equal and mutual as some assumed, but, rather, is initiated and driven by one of the fusion partners. The discovery, they say, could lead to improved treatments for muscular dystrophy, since muscle regeneration relies on cell fusion to make muscle fibers that contain hundreds or even thousands of nuclei. The study reveals two critical components that have to be present for cell fusion to happen, explains Elizabeth Chen, Ph.D., an associate professor of molecular biology and genetics in the Johns Hopkins University Institute for Basic Biomedical Sciences. Intriguingly, she says, one of these vital components actually changes the structure of one cell's scaffolding -- its cytoskeleton -- to form protrusions that push their way into the other cell to initiate fusion. Chen's research group had seen this before; using very high-resolution electron microscopy, they showed in 2010 that in developing fly muscles, a muscle cell merges with another muscle cell by extending finger-like protrusions into its fusion partner. But cell fusion is not only behind muscle building, … Continue reading →