MDA Grantee Honored

George Karpati, a world-renowned neuromuscular disease specialist and a longtime MDA grantee at the Montreal Neurological Institute (MNI), has received the Prix du Quebec Wilder Penfield (Quebec Wilder Penfield Prize) and a special merit award from the Muscular Dystrophy Association of Canada. (Wilder Penfield, a pioneer in brain surgery who died in 1976, founded MNI in 1934.)

Karpati’s MDA-funded work has centered around strategies to transfer therapeutic cells and genes in Duchenne muscular dystrophy (DMD) and to increase production of the protein utrophin, which can partially compensate for the loss of the dystrophin protein that characterizes DMD.

He’s authored some 250 original research papers and articles and, since 2002, has edited or co-authored five major books on neuromuscular disease.

Karpati has received many additional accolades, including being knighted by the Ordre National du Quebec in 2005.