Myostellar

HARNESSING THE IMMUNE SYSTEM TO DIRECT SKELETAL MUSCLE REGENERATION

Myostellar was founded upon groundbreaking scientific discovery in the field of skeletal muscle regeneration, from co-founders Professor Peter Currie and Associate Professor Mikaël Martino, and PhD student Dr Danni Ratyanake at the Australian Regenerative Medicine Institute, Monash University.

The discovery of a macrophage-secreted factor, which can trigger muscle stem cells to proliferate and heal, sheds new light on the role of the immune system in directing skeletal muscle repair. The findings were published in Nature in 2021.

The ability to directly stimulate the muscle stem cell compartment holds promise for treating a wide range of muscle-related diseases and syndromes, including profound implications for muscular dystrophy, where current treatments fail to reverse muscle fibre loss.

Myostellar is developing highly differentiated, first-in-class biologic therapeutic which stimulate muscle stem cells to regenerate muscle with minimal fibrosis, with the lead program in Duchenne Muscular Dystrophy (DMD).

The “gene agnostic” therapeutic will be applied in disease management as a standalone therapy and in combination with standard-of-care and gene-modifying approaches, with potential to expand to other muscular dystrophies and other muscle wasting diseases and conditions.

It is a wholly-owned Monash company incorporated in 2022, following success with the CUREator (Round 1) program.

“ We know our research will have a huge impact when it is made available as a therapeutic but there is still much to do on the research and commercialisation front. While we progress the research, I cannot emphasise enough the importance of finding someone who’s been on the commercialisation journey before. I was fortunate to find this within my institution and am incredibly grateful to Monash Innovation for their invaluable guidance.” — Professor Peter Currie