| The Senator Paul D. Wellstone Muscular Dystrophy Cooperative Research Center (MDCRC) is designed to advance our abilities to treat the muscular dystrophies by capitalizing on the breadth and depth of expertise at our collaborating institutions in the fields of neuromuscular disease research and patient care, molecular genetics, immunology, and gene therapy. The participating researchers include scientists and clinicians from the University of Washington Medical Center, Children's Hospital and Regional Medical Center, Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center and the VA Medical Center in Seattle, Washington. The MDCRC's goals are to provide an interactive environment that will advance knowledge of and treatments for the muscular dystrophies by promoting collaborations, providing shared resources, advancing basic research, stimulating translational research, fostering outreach activities, developing greater patient awareness of basic and clinical research and enabling their participation in clinical trials, and by facilitating the development of gene therapy for the muscular dystrophies. Our Center is composed of four research projects and four Core laboratories, and includes a membership of more than 30 faculty members in the Seattle area with interests in neuromuscular disease research. The director and co-director are Jeffrey Chamberlain and Stephen Tapscott, researchers with a long history of genetic and clinical studies of the muscular dystrophies. |
