Inclusive Leadership Workshop

Lab Life / By /

We are excited to share information about an upcoming Inclusive Leadership workshop presented by the UW Institute for Stem Cell and Regenerative Medicine.

The event, which will take place next April 24-25 in Seattle, is designed for PhD candidates and postdocs who are exploring academic career paths in regenerative medicine / engineering and related fields.

Applicants representing marginalized and historically excluded backgrounds are highly encouraged to apply. Financial aid is available for travel on a first-come, first-served basis.

More details about the event and how to apply can be found here. Please share this opportunity with anyone who you think might be interested.

Royalty Research Fund Award to Alec Smith

Grants, Honors / By /

Alec Smith has been awarded a University of Washington RRF grant for $40,000. The funded project is entitled “Using functional readouts from engineered models of innervated skeletal muscle to assess the efficacy of gene therapies targeting neuromuscular diseases”.

Alec Smith and NDRG team awarded NIH R21 grant

Grants, Research / By /

Alec Smith is the PI of a newly awarded NIH R21 grant to study muscle spindle dysfunction in Duchenne Muscular Dystrophy. David Mack, Mike Regnier, and Mark Bothwell are co-investigators.

Muscle spindles are sensory end organs in muscle that allow sensation of muscle position and movement. As muscle spindles are comprised of clusters of specialized types of muscle fibers, their proper function is likely dependent on dystrophin, just as the muscle proper is. Dystrophin mutations in Duchenne Muscular Dystrophy cause a loss of muscle cell dystrophin. Thus, it is plausible that DMD patients may experience muscle spindle dysfunction, which may contribute to the tendency of DMD patients to suffer frequent falls.

In order to develop an experimental system to study human muscle spindle function, Alec and team will produce muscle spindle cells in vitro, by differentiation of induced pluripotent stem cells bearing a dystrophin mutation, and from wild type control cells.

DOD grant to team including NDRG PI David Mack

Grants, Research / By /

A three-year $2.9 million grant from the Department of Defense Translational Research Program has been awarded to Jeffrey Chamberlain, Julie Crudele, and David Mack. The project will explore applying spit-intein technology to produce safer constructs for Duchenne Muscular Dystrophy gene therapy.

Advanced degrees awarded to members of the NDRG team

Honors, Lab Life / By /

On Monday, August 14, Cecelia Watson successfully defended her Masters dissertation “Investigation of Neuregulin-1 Treatment in 3D engineered skeletal muscle toward Intrafusal Spindle Fiber Generation in vitro”.

On Tuesday, August 15, Saffie Mohran successfully defended his PhD dissertation “The modulation of myofibril function: How small molecules and sarcomeric mutations impact actomyosin interactions”.

Congratulations Cecelia and Saffie!

Grant awarded to Alec Smith

Grants / By /

The Weil Neurohub has awarded a grant of $250,000 to Co-PIs Alec Smith and Claire Clelland, Assistant Professor, UCSF. The project, entitled

Using a stem-cell derived model of the human neuromuscular junction to test delivery and efficacy of CRISPR gene therapies for C9orf72 FTD/ALS was funded through the Next Great Ideas program.