Tubulyzine®, a novel tri-substituted triazine, prevents the early cell death of transplanted myogenic cells and improves transplantation success

Myoblast transplantation (MT) is a potential therapeutic approach for several muscular dystrophies. A major limiting factor is that only a low percentage of the transplanted myoblasts survives the procedure. Recent advances regarding how and when the myoblasts die indicate that events preceding actual tissue implantation and during the first days after the transplantation are crucial. Myoseverin, a recently identified tri-substituted purine, was shown to induce in vitro the fission of multinucleated myotubes and affect the expression of a variety of growth factors, and immunomodulation, extracellular matrix-remodeling, and stress response genes. Since the effects of myoseverin are consistent with the activation of pathways involved in wound healing and tissue regeneration, we have investigated whether pretreatment and co-injection of myoblasts with Tubulyzine(R) (microtubule lysing triazine), an optimized myoseverin-like molecule recently identified from a triazine library, could reduce myoblast cell death following their transplantation and consequently improves the success of myoblast transplantation. In vitro, using annexin-V labeling, we showed that Tubulyzine (5 muM) prevents normal myoblasts from apoptosis induced by staurosporine (1 muM). In vivo, the pretreatment and co-injection of immortal and normal myoblasts with Tubulyzine reduced significantly cell death (assessed by the radio-labeled thymidine of donor DNA) and increased survival of myoblasts transplanted in Tibialis anterior (TA) muscles of mdx mice, thus giving rise to more hybrid myofibers compared to transplanted untreated cells. Our results suggest that Tubulyzine can be used as an in vivo survival factor to improve the myoblast-mediated gene transfer approach.