NIH Names Three New Muscular Dystrophy Centers of
Excellence
TUCSON, Ariz., Nov. 4, 2005 — Three new muscular dystrophy centers
of excellence have been created by the National Institutes of Health,
the NIH and the Muscular Dystrophy Association (MDA) announced today.
The three Senator Paul D. Wellstone Muscular Dystrophy Cooperative
Research Centers, named after the late champion of muscular dystrophy
issues in Congress, have been added to three existing Wellstone centers,
all at major universities. The new ones are in Philadelphia, Washington
and Iowa City.
Muscular dystrophy is characterized by progressive weakness and loss
of voluntary muscles that control movement.
“We’re pleased to see that our hard work in convincing
Congress to increase funding for muscular dystrophy research continues
to pay dividends,” MDA President and CEO Robert Ross said. “This
is a fitting tribute to the efforts of Senator Wellstone and a positive
step on the road to finding treatments and cures for these terrible
diseases.”
One new center will be at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia.
It will be co-directed by H. Lee Sweeney, a molecular biologist and
MDA research grantee at Penn, and Kathryn Wagner, a physician-scientist
at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore who has worked on MDA-funded
projects.
Two projects at Penn are focused on ways to increase muscle growth
and on compounds to block muscle-destroying enzymes. The core facility,
a muscle physiology lab, will analyze mice with various types of muscular
dystrophy.
Clinical trials of potential treatments for Duchenne
muscular dystrophy (DMD) are planned.
Other sites cooperating with the Penn center are the University of
Florida at Gainesville and NIH’s National Institute for Neurological
Disorders and Stroke (NINDS) in Bethesda, Md.
A second new center is at Children’s National Medical Center
in Washington, under the direction of molecular biologist and longtime
MDA grantee Eric Hoffman and physician Diana Escolar, both current MDA
research grantees.
The focus in Washington will be on biochemical pathways that contribute
to DMD. One project aims to identify genetic modifiers of DMD, while
two others will focus on muscle cell damage and muscle development.
The Washington center has a bioinformatics and computing core, as well
as a clinical core. Collaborating with the center is the University
of Padova in Italy.
The third center, at the University of Iowa in Iowa City, will be directed
by Kevin Campbell, a protein chemist and longtime MDA research grantee,
along with pathologist Steven Moore, who has received MDA support in
the past.
One Iowa project focuses on muscle membrane maintenance and repair
and another on stem cell treatment in mice.
Core centers there will serve as a national resource for stem cells
for MD researchers and will provide advanced services for diagnosing
muscular dystrophies.
The new centers join three existing centers at the University of Washington
at Seattle, the University of Pittsburgh and the University of Rochester
(N.Y.). NIH and MDA jointly fund these centers.
All the centers spring from the Muscular Dystrophy Community Assistance,
Research and Education (MD-CARE) Act, passed by Congress in 2001 with
strong support form MDA.
The centers work individually and cooperatively, and are guided by
a steering committee that includes representatives from each center.
MDA (www.mda.org) is a voluntary health agency working to defeat
more than 40 neuromuscular
diseases through programs of worldwide research, comprehensive services,
and far-reaching professional and public health education.
# # # |
