University of Iowa Named Fourth
Wellstone Center
In July, the National Institutes of Health named the University
of Iowa in Iowa City the fourth Senator Paul D. Wellstone Muscular
Dystrophy Cooperative Research Center. The establishment of
these centers results from the passage of the MDA-backed MD-CARE
Act in 2001. The first three, which are co-funded by NIH and
MDA, are located at the University of Washington-Seattle, the
University of Rochester (N.Y.) and the University of Pittsburgh.
The lead investigator at the new Iowa Wellstone Center is muscle
physiologist Kevin Campbell, a long-time MDA research grantee,
holder of the Roy J. Carver Chair of Physiology and Biophysics
at UI, and a Howard Hughes Medical Institute investigator.
The Center will conduct three projects and run three core facilities
to explore basic biological mechanisms that relate to possible
treatments for muscular dystrophies, encourage the translation
of research from lab to clinic, and provide advanced diagnostic
services.
Campbell will lead an investigation of whether improving muscle
cell membrane maintenance, particularly through increasing levels
of proteins known as LARGE and dysferlin, can provide a basis
for new Duchenne muscular dystrophy treatments.
A second project, led by Katherine Mathews, director of the
MDA neuromuscular disease clinic at UI and a professor of pediatrics
and neurology there, will concentrate on type 2I limb-girdle
MD.
A third project, led by Baoli Yang, assistant professor of
obstetrics and gynecology at UI, will explore the possibility
of using stem cells to treat muscular dystrophies.
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