Medications

Why some RNA drugs work better than others

Spinal muscular atrophy, or SMA, is the leading genetic cause of infant death. Less than a decade ago, Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory (CSHL) Professor Adrian Krainer showed this brutal disease can be treated by tweaking a ...

Neuroscience

New therapeutic strategies for spinal muscular atrophy

Modulating the activity of a kinase in motor neurons may help mitigate mitochondrial defects and other symptoms of spinal muscular atrophy, offering a new therapeutic avenue for the devastating disease, according to a Northwestern ...

Oncology & Cancer

Scientists find gene therapy reduces liver cancer in animal model

Researchers at UC Davis Comprehensive Cancer Center have shown that inhibiting a specific protein using gene therapy can shrink hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) in mice. Silencing the galectin 1 (Gal1) protein, which is often ...

Genetics

Q&A: Understanding carrier screening for family planning

Dear Mayo Clinic: My husband and I want to expand our family and are trying to get pregnant with our first baby. I've read about family planning couples can do before conceiving and learned about carrier screening. We don't ...

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Spinal muscular atrophy (SMA) is an incurable autosomal recessive disease caused by a genetic defect in the SMN1 gene which codes SMN, a protein necessary for survival of motor neurons, and resulting in death of neuronal cells in the anterior horn of spinal cord and subsequent system-wide muscle wasting (atrophy).

Spinal muscular atrophy manifests in various degrees of severity which all have in common general muscle wasting and mobility impairment. Other body systems may be affected as well, particularly in early-onset forms. Spinal muscular atrophy is the most common genetic cause of infant death.

Sometimes, the term spinal muscular atrophy is used to encompass other hereditary disorders that involve death of motor neurons in the anterior horn of spinal cord - see spinal muscular atrophies.

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