Abstract: A method of pretreating healthy donor's myoblast cultures with growth or trophic factors like basic fibroblast growth factor (bFGF) and with concanavalin A on transplantation to subjects suffering of myopathy like muscular dystrophy is disclosed and claimed. Recipient muscles show a higher percentage of functional cells, a four-fold increase, demonstrated by the higher incidence of dystrophin-positive fibers, and does not require previous preconditioning of recipient muscles by irradiation or toxin administration. The recipient subjects were immunosuppressed with FK 506. When growing myoblasts with 20 &mgr;g/ml concanavalin A or 100 ng/ml TPA for two to four days, migration of donor cells in recipient tissue was increased by 3-4 fold.

Abstract: The present invention relates to a method for preconditioning healthy donor's myoblasts in vitro before transplantation thereof in compatible patients suffering of recessive myopathies, particularly of muscular dystrophy. This in vitro preconditioning improves the success of the transplantation while not requiring an in vivo preconditioning of the patient's muscle by irradiation or by administering muscular toxin. The invention further relates to compositions comprising such preconditioned myoblasts.

Abstract: This invention relates to a method of treating an inherited disease due to a point mutation producing a stop codon by administering an effective dose of an aminoglycoside antibiotic or a derivative thereof. Mdx mouse, which is an animal model for Duchenne muscular dystrophy, has been successfully treated with intramuscularly administered 1 and 5 mg gentamicin, which had for effect to suppress the premature stop mutation by inserting an amino acid at the stop codon. Dystrophin positive muscle fibers not different in number from those of normal mouse were detected at the dose of 5 mg gentamicin.

Abstract: A method of pretreating healthy donor's myoblast cultures with growth or trophic factors like basic fibroblast growth factor (bFGF) on transplantation to subjects suffering of recessive myopathy like muscular dystrophy is disclosed and claimed. Recipient muscles show a higher percentage of functional cells, demonstrated by the higher incidence of dystrophin-positive fibers, and does not require previous preconditioning of recipient muscles by irradiation or toxin administration. Donor mouse myoblasts expressing the reporter gene .beta.- galactosidase were grown with 100 ng/ml bFGF during the last two days before injecting them in the left tibialis anterior (TA) muscles of recipient MHC-compatible mdx mice, an experimental animal model of muscular dystrophy. Myoblasts from the same primary cultures were also grown without bFGF and injected in the right TA muscles as control. The recipient mice were immunosuppressed with FK 506. Twenty-eight days after myoblast transplantation, the percentage of .beta.