The branches · Movement and body · could move a stage within 5 to 20 years
A gene therapy builds stronger muscle in a healthy body
Muscle growth is held back by a protein called myostatin; animals and the rare people born without it have roughly twice the muscle. A gene therapy that blocks myostatin, given once, made mice and later monkeys markedly stronger with no training. In people it has only been tried in those with a muscle disease, in trials that changed little. A healthy person made stronger by a gene is the upgrade this entry waits for; a company founder's claim to have done it to herself in 2015 has no checkable record behind it.
What would count
A healthy adult, given a gene therapy that blocks myostatin or raises a muscle-growth signal, gains measurable muscle mass and strength on standard tests without a change in training, in a peer-reviewed report.
Who settles it: Peer-reviewed reports; a trial registry entry naming healthy volunteers; a regulator's record if it reaches one
Where it stands
Shown in animals. Reached on 18 March 2008, on the record of doi.org. Could move a stage within 5 to 20 years.
The last reading
Once a week every upgrade is read against the news, against what would count above. Open a line to see what that week held. Every reading of this upgrade is on this week's reading.
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16 October 2026 Nothing new
Nothing in the window. No trial of a myostatin-blocking or muscle-growth gene therapy in healthy adults was found; the human trials on record are antibody or protein blockers in healthy volunteers, or gene therapies in people with muscle disease, neither of which meets the test. A 2026 Nature Communications genetics study of 1.1 million people found carriers of myostatin-disrupting variants have more lean mass and grip strength, which bears on safety, not on the rung.
Notes
The record is the 2008 report of mice given a single injection of a gene for a myostatin blocker, which stayed larger and stronger for life; the same group reported it in monkeys in November 2009. Trials in people with Becker muscular dystrophy and inclusion body myositis followed, which do not count here because the body was not healthy. BioViva's 2015 claim that its chief executive took a myostatin blocking gene therapy rests on the company's own word and has no published measurement, so it does not move the stage.