NIH Names Three New MD Centers of Excellence

As a result of the passage of the 2001 MD-CARE Act, Congress mandated that the National Institutes of Health (NIH) establish and fund several "centers of excellence" for muscular dystrophy research. Three such centers, at the University of Washington-Seattle, the University of Rochester (N.Y.) and the University of Pittsburgh, were awarded grants from both NIH and MDA shortly thereafter and are now known as Sen. Paul D. Wellstone Muscular Dystrophy Cooperative Research Centers.

Recently NIH has designated three additional Wellstone centers. They're at the University of Iowa in Iowa City, Children's National Medical Center in Washington and the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia.

All Wellstone centers involve MDA research grantees and emphasize biomedical research projects with relevance to muscular dystrophy treatment.