The 8th French-Japanese Workshop on Muscular Dystrophies, “From pathophysiology to biotherapies”, was held on July 3-4, 2009, at the Institute of Myology. Thirty speakers followed one after the other, talking on basic biology, molecular genetic, physiopathology and biotherapies. Thomas Voit kicked off this very dense two-day workshop which began with David Sassoon's talk whereas Shin'ichi Takeda closed the the last session.