MDA has awarded a research development grant totaling $180,000 over three years to Hao Shi, associate research scientist at Yale University in New Haven, Conn. The new funds will help support Shi’s study of muscle repair and regeneration in Duchenne muscular dystrophy (DMD).

MDA has awarded a research grant totaling $375,000 over three years to Young-Jin Son, associate professor of developmental neurobiology at Temple University in Philadelphia. The new funds will help support Son’s study of nerve and muscle interaction in muscle diseases such as Duchenne muscular dystrophy (DMD).

MDA has awarded a research grant totaling $220,000 over two years to Jen-Chywan Wang, assistant professor at the University of California, Berkeley. The new funds will help support Wang’s study of the effects of chronic glucocorticoid (steroid) treatment in Duchenne muscular dystrophy (DMD).

MDA awarded a grant totaling $367,386 over three years to Masahiko Hoshijima, professor of medicine at the University of California, San Diego in La Jolla, Calif. The funds will help support Hoshijima's research into connections between cardiac and respiratory failure in muscle diseases such as Duchenne (DMD), Becker (BMD) and other muscular dystrophies (MDs).

MDA has awarded a research grant totaling $202,222 over two years to David Lynch, professor of neurology at Children's Hospital of Philadelphia and University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine. The funds will help support Lynch's study of the relationship between diabetes and Friedreich's ataxia (FA).

Melissa Spencer, professor of neurology and co-director of the Center for Duchenne Muscular Dystrophy at the University of California, Los Angeles, has been awarded an MDA grant totaling $501,493 over three years. The funds will help support Spencer's continuing studies of the role of a protein called osteopontin and of inflammatory processes in a mouse model of Duchenne muscular dystrophy (DMD).

MDA has awarded a research grant totaling $447,092 over three years to Alessandra Sacco, an assistant professor in the Muscle Development and Regeneration Program at Sanford-Burnham Medical Research Institute in La Jolla, Calif. The grant will help support Sacco's research on early-stage transplantation of muscle stem cells to treat a mouse model of Duchenne muscular dystrophy (DMD).

MDA has awarded a grant totaling $375,000 over three years to Michael Rudnicki, director of the Regenerative Medicine Program at Ottawa Hospital Research Institute and a professor in the department of medicine at the University of Ottawa, Canada. This funding will support Rudnicki's continuing studies on the function of muscle satellite cells in mice with a disease resembling human Duchenne muscular dystrophy (DMD).

MDA has awarded a research grant totaling $602,087 over three years to Thomas Rando, a professor in the department of neurology and neurological sciences at Stanford (Calif.) University School of Medicine. The grant will help support Rando's studies to understand how scar-tissue formation (fibrosis) occurs in muscular dystrophies, especially Duchenne muscular dystrophy (DMD) and Becker muscular dystrophy (BMD).

MDA has awarded a research grant totaling $474,278 over three years to Terence Partridge, a professor of pediatrics at George Washington University Medical School and Children's National Medical Center in Washington, D.C. The award will help support Partridge's work to improve the usefulness of the standard mouse model of Duchenne muscular dystrophy (DMD), the so-called "mdx" mouse.