28 May : Scientists have used heart tissue to cure mice of a fatal muscle disease which causes a Floppy Baby Syndrome, a breakthrough that they claim could save thousands of lives.A team at the Western Australian Institute for Medical Research has restored muscle function in mice with one type of Floppy Baby Syndrome that causes babies to be born without the ability to properly use their muscles and even take the lives of the majority of these children before the age of one.
Lead scientist Dr Kristen Nowak said the team was extremely encouraged that it had been able to cure a group of mice born with the condition.
"The mice with Floppy Baby Syndrome were only expected to live for about nine days, but we managed to cure them so they were born with normal muscle function, allowing them to live naturally and very actively into old age.”
"This is an important step towards one day hopefully being able to better the lives of human patients — mice who were cured of the disease lived more than two years, which is very old age for a mouse," she said.