MDA Director of Translational Research Jane Larkindale is intimately involved in developing therapies for neuromuscular diseases.

Jane spends her days working with academics and companies to accelerate therapy development in many different capacities, such as getting expert opinions from MDA’s advisory committees and reviewers to decide what the best prospects are; working with academics and companies to keep projects on track; helping access expert advisers and partners; and more.

Jane brings a broad background in science to MDA. She completed her D.Phil. (Ph.D.) at Oxford University in the United Kingdom in 2001 (which she attended on a Rhodes Scholarship), and has done research in areas as diverse as molecular biology, biochemistry, genomics, plant science, medical physics, marine biology and industrial chemistry.

During MDA’s Clinical Conference, Jane will be writing blogs summarizing the afternoon sessions for a lay audience.  These sessions are about “Best Practices” (i.e., how MDA clinics can give each and every patient the best care possible).  She’s looking forward to hearing from experts in the neuromuscular community about new developments in clinical care, particularly as many of the issues to be discussed (such as the changing natural history of ALS and transitional care) are new issues brought about by the success of interventions already available to patients.  “I hope that the results from MDA’s translational research program will raise the need for many more of these types of discussions, as patients live longer, healthier lives due to improved therapeutic and care options,” she says.

Blogs

How far we have come!

There is so much that we can do to treat patients!