The Wellstone Muscular Dystrophy Research Center

In the Fall of 2015, the National Institutes of Health designated UT Southwestern as one of six Wellstone Muscular Dystrophy Research Centers in the nation. Drs. Eric Olson and Pradeep Mammen co-direct the Center, which is named in honor of the late Senator Paul D. Wellstone of Minnesota, who was a champion of muscular dystrophy research.

Wellstone Centers seek to promote collaborative basic, translational, and clinical research and provide important resources that can be used by muscular dystrophy researchers. The mission of the UT Southwestern Center is to rapidly translate genome editing, a novel molecular technique capable of correcting mutations within the human genome, into a potentially viable treatment for patients with Duchenne muscular dystrophy (DMD).

The Center is divided into three cores and two research projects:

• Administrative Core
• Myoediting Core
• Training Core
• Research Projects
  • Project 1: Focused on the science of genome editing
  • Project 2: Focused on the translational aspect of genome editing as it applies to Duchenne muscular dystrophy