Interview of Dr. Joel Chamberlain regarding her lab's work on therapy development.

Updates and round-table discussion on FSHD on the morning of the January Auction.

Dr. Chamberlain will be investigating the how DUX4 expression in humans relates to disease pathology.

Today the University of Washington announced that it received four years of funding for a Paul D. Wellstone Muscular Dystrophy Cooperative Research Center from the National Institute of Arthritis and Musculoskeletal and Skin Diseases (NIAMS), a branch of the National Institutes of Health (NIH).

The research goals of 2011-13 were to 1) create a model of FSHD that displayed features of the disease in muscles of laboratory mice through production of human DUX4 protein and 2) to test a therapeutic approach to block production of DUX4 protein in patient cell lines grown in tissue culture dishes in the laboratory.

The primary cause of FSHD is abnormal activation of the Dux4 gene, so mouse models need to reproduce production of Dux4.

The milestones for year one were to perform an initial screen for Platform 1 and prepare and validate Platform 2.

Recent discoveries provide us with a clearer understanding of how the genetics of FSHD translate into disease.

Summary of paper in Molecular Therapy from Joel R. Chamberlain and Davide Gabellini

This brought together the various labs which have been collaborating in an effort to push ahead on FSH research through an open exchange of unpublished research.

The Muscular Dystrophy Association (MDA), headquartered in Tucson, Ariz., and Friends of FSH Research (FFSHR), based in Kirkland, Wash., today jointly awarded a two-year, $200,000 grant to Joel Chamberlain, research assistant professor of medical genetics at the University of Washington. The grant, equally funded by the two organizations, will enable the laboratory led by Dr. Chamberlain to study RNA interference as an investigative and therapeutic tool for facioscapulohumeral muscular dystrophy.

Friends of FSH Research in collaboration with the MDA fund a two-year grant for Dr. Joel Chamberlain.