Myotonic Dystrophy Foundation

2012-2013 Fund-A-Fellow Postdoctoral Fellow Grant Recipients

Micah Bodner, Ph.D.

University of Oregon, Eugene, Oregon, USA

Dr. Bodner’s research, “Therapeutic Agents for Myotonic Dystrophy; Defining the Pharmacophore of Pentamidine,” under the guidance of Dr. John Andrew Berglund, Ph.D., at the University of Oregon, will continue the study of a potential therapeutic drug, pentamidine, which was recently identified by the University of Oregon. Pentamidine is a promising lead compound for treatment of DM. Pentamidine and compounds like it have been used to reverse symptoms of DM in cell and mouse models of the disease and even alleviate myotonia in mice. However, some obstacles must be overcome before a pentamidine-based compound can be used clinically. The obstacles include: a lack of evidence for how pentamidine elicits the therapeutic effect; lack of oral availability; lack of central nervous system (CNS) activity; and toxicity. The experiments proposed in Dr. Bodner’s research plan are designed to increase understanding of how pentamidine functions and how to manipulate it in order to make a useful DM therapeutic that is orally available, CNS active and non-toxic.

The information gained from these experiments will also be used to design other compounds similar to pentamidine to better understand what portions of the compound promote binding to the RNA fragment. These compounds will then be used in DM cell and mouse model testing to understand how they perform in tests and whether they are tolerated by the cells and animals. 

Nicholas Johnson, M.D.

University of Rochester Medical Center, Rochester, New York, USA

Dr. Johnson’s research, “Characterization of Symptoms and Development of a Disease Specific Instrument for Congenital and Juvenile Myotonic Dystrophy,” under the guidance of Dr. Chad Heatwole, M.D. at the University of Rochester Medical Center in Rochester, New York, will study the severe congenital and juvenile onset forms of myotonic dystrophy.

Currently, there is very little information about the most critical symptoms associated with these forms of the disease. There are anecdotal reports that indicate that the issues important to patients with early onset myotonic dystrophy are different from those experienced by adult onset myotonic dystrophy patients. In addition, to date no significant research has been conducted to study the impacts of promising adult-onset DM therapies in congenital and juvenile-onset populations. This project will collect survey data from children and their parents describing and prioritizing the effects of the disease on the children’s cognitive, physical, and emotional health. This data will be used to create an instrument measuring quality of life for this population, both with respect to the impact of key DM issues and of current adult-onset treatments on key issues affecting congenital and juvenile-onset DM patients and their family members.

Zhihua (Tina) Gao, Ph.D.

Baylor College of Medicine, Houston, Texas, USA

Dr. Gao’s research, “Development of Therapeutic Approaches to Silence CUG Expansion RNA in Myotonic Dystrophy Mouse Models Using Recombinant Adeno-associated Virus,” under the guidance of Dr. Thomas Cooper, M.D., at Baylor College of Medicine in Houston, Texas, will use a virus that has been modified for therapies of other muscular dystrophies to carry elements that can remove the toxic RNA in myotonic dystrophy mouse models. The effective therapeutic approach developed in the mouse model holds a potential for future clinical trials in DM1 patients.

Myotonic dystrophy is caused by an unusual genetic mutation in which a small DNA segment of the mutated gene is repeated hundreds of times. DNA, in the form of chromosomes, is in the nucleus of a cell. When there is a need, DNA is copied into RNA. RNA then moves from the nucleus to the cytoplasm of the cell to deliver the genetic message. In myotonic dystrophy, the mutated gene is copied into RNA, but the RNA is trapped in the nucleus because of the repeated segments. The RNA then builds up in the nucleus and creates problems that disrupt the functions of many other genes. The RNA with repeated segments therefore becomes very toxic.

By forcing the expression of the mutated gene with hundreds of repeated segments in mouse skeletal muscle and heart, researchers have mimicked the DM1 (type 1) disease in mice. The goal of Dr. Gao’s proposal is to develop a recombinant adeno-associated virus (rAAV) vector-based strategy to clear away the toxic RNA in the DM1 mice. Dr. Gao’s sponsoring facility, the lab of Dr. Thomas Cooper, M.D., at Baylor College of Medicine, recently established a collaboration with Dr. Reed Clark, Ph.D., at the Center for Gene Therapy at Nationwide Children's Hospital/Ohio State University in Columbus, Ohio, led by Dr. Jerry R. Mendell, M.D.  A major effort of the Center is to develop rAAV vectors for therapeutic approaches for DMD, LGMD, FSHD, and DM1. Once established and optimized in mice, Dr. Gao and her team will work with collaborators to develop rAAV as a therapeutic approach for human trials. This strategy will be developed for DM1, the more common form of DM, but can also be used for DM2 (type 2).

Eric Wang, Ph.D.

Harvard-MIT Health Sciences and Technology, Cambridge, Massachussetts, USA

Dr. Wang’s research, “Identification of RNA Processing Changes in the Myotonic Dystrophy Transcriptome,” under the guidance of Dr. Christopher Burge, Ph.D., and Dr. David E. Housman, Ph.D., at Harvard-MIT Division of Health Sciences and Technology (HST), Cambridge, Massachusetts, will help to improve the understanding of DM pathogenesis.

Various events associated with the expanded RNA repeat sequences that cause DM have been well established, but there are other hypotheses for what happens during DM pathogenesis. To date there have been no studies globally surveying all the RNA changes in DM, making it challenging for the DM research community to conclude whether it has identified all the major cellular pathways disturbed in DM. Identifying all these changes will provide a research road map, as well as specific readouts that can be used for diagnostics and therapeutic studies. Using a type of high throughput sequencing technology that has been recently developed, Dr. Wang proposes to identify RNA level changes that occur in various mouse models of DM, assess the extent to which current models for DM pathogenesis can explain what is happening in human DM, and develop potential therapeutic interventions using the insights gained from these analyses. The successful completion of these studies will augment the DM community’s understanding of DM pathogenesis, and provide a set of biomarkers that can be used immediately for diagnostics and therapeutic development.

2011-2012 Fund-A-Fellow Postdoctoral Fellow Grant Recipients 

John Cleary, Ph.D.

University of Florida in Gainesville, Florida, USA

Working with Dr. Laura Ranum, Dr. Cleary's research is titled, “An Investigation of the Genetic Mechanisms in Myotonic Dystrophy" The primary cause of the disease is a mutated version of a gene that contains an excess number of small repetitive sections of DNA. These sections, termed trinucleotide repeats, normally occur in numbers between 5 and 34 but in the mutant version expand upwards to several hundred or even several thousand. As a consequence when transcribed into RNA, the initial step towards making a protein, the repeats, due to their expanded size, soak up cellular proteins that bind repeat-containing RNA creating an RNA gain-of-function effect. Unable to let go of the expanded RNA, these cellular proteins are prevented from accomplishing their regular function and cause a cascade of negative consequences to the cell.

The majority of current research has assumed that certain classes of repeats, due to their location in the gene, are not made into proteins. However recent evidence by the Ranum lab suggests these repeats may actually express a variety of proteins that due to their repetitive nature could have serious cellular consequences. What is perhaps more unexpected is that the repeats make these proteins by essentially taking it upon themselves to start the process - bypassing the cell’s traditional methods by which RNA is made into proteins. These data suggest that in addition to the RNA gain-of-function effects, the expression and accumulation of these unexpected expansion proteins could also contribute to myotonic dystrophy. The focus of Dr. Cleary's postdoctoral research will be to understand the potential role that these proteins play in disease.

Alexa Dickson, Ph.D.

Colorado State University in Ft. Collins, Colorado, USA

Working with Dr. Carol Wilusz, Dr. Dickson's research is titled, “The Role of mRNA Stability in Myotonic Dystrophy" Myotonic dystrophy is a genetic disorder caused by an increase of repeats in the DNA. Although the mechanism is unclear, researchers know the increased DNA repeat length causes a defect in CUGBP1, a protein responsible for determining the levels of gene expression in the cell. Without proper control of gene expression, abnormal levels of proteins result, which is thought to cause some of the symptoms in myotonic dystrophy. Dr. Dickson’s proposal examines the role of CUGBP1 in normal cellular function and seeks to determine the defect of the protein in myotonic dystrophy. With this knowledge, researchers may be able to more rationally design therapeutics targeted to improving the quality of life of a myotonic dystrophy patient.

2010-2011 Fund-A-Fellow Grant Recipients 

Stacey Wagner, Ph.D.

University of Oregon in Eugene, Oregon, USA

Working with principle investigators, Dr. Andrew Berglund and Dr. Michael Haley, Dr. Wagner's research, "Small Molecule Therapeutics Based on Pentamidine for the Treatment of Myotonic Dystrophy", aims to modify the existing drug, pentamidine to use as a safe treatment to eliminate the symptoms of myotonic dystrophy.

Today, pentamidine carries approval of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration for treating a severe type of pneumonia in people with weakened immune systems, as well as leishmaniasis, sleeping sickness and some yeast infections. Researchers have discovered that levels used successfully in experiments in mice would be toxic in humans so modifications must be made to this compound. Dr. Wagner's work is focused on finding better pentamidine analogs that are promising as a therapeutic compound for myotonic dystrophy.

2009-2010 Fund-A-Fellow Grant Recipients 

Auinash Kalsotra, Ph.D.

Baylor College of Medicine in Houston, Texas, USA

Working with Dr. Thomas Cooper, Dr. Kalsotra’s research, “Regulatory Mechanisms of CELF Protein in Cardiac Development and Myotonic Dystrophy” aims to identify cellular pathways that are disrupted in myotonic dystrophy type 1 (DM1). In the long term, such an understanding might allow manipulations to correct or circumvent the disease process at the molecular level.

John Lueck, Ph.D.

University of Iowa, Carver College of Medicine, Iowa City, Iowa, USA

Working with Dr. Kevin Campbell, Dr. Lueck’s research, “Understanding Muscle Weakness and Wasting in Myotonic Dystrophy”, will investigate the molecular mechanisms underlying muscle weakness and wasting in myotonic dystrophy. The results of this study will not only shed light on the mechanism of muscle disease in myotonic dystrophy type 1 (DM1), but will also help unravel the mysteries of other muscular dystrophies. Ultimately, the goal of this research is to discover new avenues of therapy for myotonic dystrophy.