2:30pm Friday 13th November 2009
A STOURBRIDGE Professor has been awarded a grant of nearly £60,000 to carry out research into incurable muscle-wasting conditions.
Prof Dame Kay Davies, who carries out research into the genetic basis of neuromuscular and neurological disorders at Oxford University, has been given the £59,526 award by The Muscular Dystrophy Campaign to fund the first year of a two-year project looking at a potential therapy for Duchenne muscular dystrophy sufferers.
The devastating and life-shortening condition mainly affects boys and it is thought there are around 2,400 sufferers in the UK.
Between the ages of eight and 11 boys become unable to walk and by their late teens or 20s their heart and respiratory muscles become affected.
But Prof Davies hopes to improve the efficiency of a gene therapy treatment called a ‘molecular patch’ to help ‘patch’ over a faulty part of the gene to allow the muscle to start producing the missing protein dystrophin.
Molecular patch therapy, or exon skipping as it is also referred to, is currently being clinically trialled as a suitable approach to help Duchenne muscular dystrophy sufferers - and if it proves effective scientists hope it could lessen the symptoms of the condition.
Prof Davies said: “This funding comes at an exciting time for the development of treatments for Duchenne muscular dystrophy which is such a devastating muscle wasting disease.
“There is now a real hope that we can make a difference for so many patients and their families.”
This project is one of six new grants awarded this year by the Muscular Dystrophy Campaign for research into neuromuscular conditions.
It forms part of the charity’s long-term commitment to fund world-class research.
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