THE HULK GENE
EDGE OF REALITY
In December 2005, a report was published in the
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences citing
132
MUSCLE & FITNESS
FEBRUARY 2016
the development of an agent by Lee’s group that
trumped all others in producing muscle. The new
myostatin inhibitor, called ACVR2B, worked far better
and faster than even Lee had anticipated.
“The soluble form of the myostatin receptor is by far
the most potent agent that’s been described to date,
and we showed in that paper that just two injections of
this agent spaced one week apart can increase muscle
mass by 40–60%,” Lee says.
That means that only two weeks after the first of two
injections of ACVR2B into a mouse muscle, there can
be up to a 60% increase in mass. For researchers, as
well as victims of muscle-wasting diseases such as MD
and AIDS, Lee’s latest discovery holds exciting prom-
ise. For bodybuilders and strength athletes, it could
mean an advantage so great that it would leave steroids,
growth hormone, and insulin in the dust. What’s more,
unlike those ergogenic drugs, gene therapy would be,
for practical purposes, undetectable.
It’s inevitable that Lee’s ongoing myostatin research,
and possibly Sweeney’s IGF-1 project, will soon yield
therapies that will save the lives of millions of people
afflicted with muscle-wasting diseases. Aging will no
longer mean a default loss of muscle size an