Nationwide Children’s Hospital Receives Prestigious Designation and $7M Grant to Advance Muscular Dystrophy Research

Nationwide Children’s Hospital has been named a Paul D. Wellston Muscular Dystrophy Research Center, and is one of only three centers nationally to receive this prestigious designation in 2010. The honor comes with a $7 million grant from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) which will help researchers translate new scientific findings and technological developments into innovative treatments for the muscular dystrophies.

The award will help explore and refine therapeutic strategies that have shown promise in animal models and will continue to further this research on to human clinical trials. These efforts include replacing defective genes responsible for muscular dystrophy with healthy ones. Other trials use substitute or surrogate genes to restore muscle function. A third approach attempts to repair gene function using specially designed medications. All the studies aim to slow the progression of muscular dystrophy.

For more on this story, see the release from Nationwide Children’s Hospital.