About
GYM (Generate Your Muscle) aims to develop and commercially produce a stem cell therapy for recovery of muscle mass and strength in patients with muscle disease and muscle breakdown. GYM will make the EMR a leader in stem cell therapy for muscle disease. The challenges the GYM project addresses impact both the vulnerable population and the socio-economic status of the EMR.
GYM combats the major health care problem of loss of muscle mass and power, which impacts the EMR more than other regions.
For each case, no effective treatment exists and the development of a generic therapy has an enormous impact in preventing severe suffering and improving quality of life. In addition, the economic significance is big. For genetic muscle disease, the costs are at least €500,000 per patient, while those of age-related muscle loss already amount to 1.5% of health care costs. This is even a bigger issue in the EMR, having a higher degree of aging and lower life expectancy, especially in specifc, vulnerable areas.
Insufficient physical exercise, overweight, smoking (cancer), age and poor socio-economic status are key determing factors. GYM has the potential to combat the accompanying loss of muscle mass and to improve quality of life and life expectancy and save health care costs.
GYM will improve the socioeconomic status of the EMR, compensating the loss of old industry.
A higher socio-economic status will generate high-quality jobs, a better environment and improved quality of life. GYM will contribute to this by fostering cross-border collaborations and establishing a highly innovative company in the EMR for the production of muscle stem cells, which can become an international player, making use of regional supply companies. Cross-border cooperation is key to this project due to available synergistic expertise and complementary infrastructure on each site of the border in knowledge institutions as well as in companies.
The GYM treatment consists of administering large numbers of healthy, autologous muscle stem cells, called mesoangioblasts as autologous somatic Cell Therapy Medicinal Product (asCTMP), to the patient's blood. These mesoangioblasts migrate to affected muscles, growing into healthy muscle fibers and compensating loss of muscle mass and strength. Based on succesful preclinical studies and production acoording to Good Manufacturing Practice (GMP), a phase I/II clinical (Technological Readiness Level [TRL] 6/7) can already be executed.
The project has 3 objectives
The company will be established as spin off during the project. The momentum exists in the EMR to become a key player in muscle stem cell therapy, embedded in the excellent frontal area of regenerative medicine, this region aims to be.
WITH THE SUPPORT OF
The project is co-funded by the Interreg Euregio Meuse-Rhine programme.
Interreg is a European Union funding programme that addresses disparities between regions and encourages cross-border collaboration.