Medical and Scientific Advisory Committee - Myotonic Dystrophy Foundation

The Medical and Scientific Advisory Committee is comprised of individuals who collectively have devoted more than ninety years to studying muscle diseases, specifically myotonic dystrophy. 

 Tetsuo Ashizawa, MD

Professor and Chairman of the Neurology Department at the University of Texas Medical Branch at Galveston, Dr. Ashizawa graduated from Keio University School of Medicine in Tokyo in 1973. He completed his internship in Medicine in Pittsburgh, residency in Neurology and fellowship in Muscular Dystrophy at Baylor College of Medicine in Houston. While at Baylor he assisted one of several teams around the world in locating the DMPK gene for myotonic dystrophy. He has been given numerous research awards and grants - especially for myotonic dystrophy and ataxia. In 1997, he and Dr. Claudine Junien co-founded the International Myotonic Dystrophy Consortium, a bi-annual scientific meeting where physicians and scientists convene to determine the cause and ultimately a viable treatment or cure forDM. Dr. Ashizawa has published numerous articles on myotonic dystrophy in medical and scientific journals. For more info on Dr. Ashizawa click this link to UTMB.

 

John Day, MD, PhD

Currently Professor of Neurology at the University of Minnesota, Dr. Day attended medical school there also, graduating in 1977. He attended graduate school at Albert Einstein College of Medicine and completed his internship in Internal Medicine in New York. He did his residency in Neurology and a Fellowship in Clinical Neurophysiology and Neuromuscular Disease at the University of California in San Francisco. Currently he is Co-Director of the Paul and Sheila Wellstone Muscular Dystrophy Center at the University of Minnesota, Director of the MDA clinic, and Director of the Neuromuscular Biopsy Laboratory. In 2001, along with Laura Ranum, PhD and team, he participated in the identification and genetic characterization of myotonic dystrophy type-2 caused by a mutation on the third chromosome. He has published numerous articles on myotonic dystrophy in professional journals and is currently conducting a brain-imaging study of affected individuals. For further info on Dr. Day click this link to U of Minnesota.

 

Richard Lymn, PhD

Dr. Lymn is a bio-physicist who dedicated his entire career to muscle research. After majoring in math at the Johns Hopkins University, he attended graduate school at the University of Chicago where he made groundbreaking discoveries on the chemical steps producing muscle force that have become the major basic authority on that topic. After graduate school, he worked at the Medical Research Council Laboratory of Molecular Biology in Cambridge, England correlating chemical and structural changes during muscle contraction. He continued his studies of molecular changes during muscle force generation at the National Institutes of Health (NIH). Dr. Lymn left active research to become a health scientist administrator at the NIH where he created a muscle biology program of grants and contracts that grew to a budget greater than $70 million. He detected areas that needed enhancement and implemented initiatives in new fields. In 2005 he organized the Burden of Muscle Disease conference at the NIH, which focused on three muscular dystrophies, including myotonic dystrophy. Dr. Lymn left NIH after nearly thirty years of leading Federal efforts to further the understanding of muscle biology and to guide the research process. He continues to foster research on muscular diseases, collaborating with researchers and private groups. For further information, see www.lymnfoundation.org. The non-profit Lymn Foundation was founded in 1999. Grants were first awarded in 2006 to recognize the students and researchers under 35 who show promise in contributing to the knowledge of muscle biology and muscle disease.

Richard Moxley III, MD

Dr. Moxley is Professor of Neurology and Pediatrics, Division of Medicine, at the University of Rochester in Rochester, New York and Director of the Wellstone Muscular Dystrophy Center. After graduating from Harvard and the University of Pennsylvania Medical School, he completed his internship in Pennsylvania and then a Heart Disease and Stroke Control Program at NASA Headquarters. His residency was in Neurology at Harvard Medical Center and his fellowship in Medicine at Johns Hopkins University. He completed a Postdoctoral NIH special fellowship in Endocrinology and Metabolism at Johns Hopkins. In addition to the directorship of the muscular dystrophy center, he is Associate Chairman of the Department of Neurology at Strong Memorial Hospital, and formerly Director of EMG/Nerve Conduction Laboratory at Strong Memorial Hospital. With support from the NIH he initiated the National Registry for DM and FSHD (facioscapulohumoral dystrophy, another form of muscular dystrophy), a tool investigators can use to incorporate affected DM family members into their research. He has published numerous articles on myotonic dystrophy in professional journals and serves on many advisory boards and committees. Dr. Moxley has carried out an investigation of Mexiletine, a medication that relaxes myotonia, or muscle stiffness; and is currently conducting a clinical trial of SomatoKine in individuals with myotonic dystrophy. For further information on Dr. Moxley click this link to URMC.

Charles Thornton, MD

Dr. Thornton is Professor of Neurology at the University of Rochester. He, along with Dr. Moxley, is a Co-Director of the MDA clinic at URMC. He received his BA and medical degree from the University of Iowa. His internship in Internal Medicine was carried out in the UCLA/SFV Program. He finished his residency in Neurology in 1985 at Oregon Health Sciences University and a fellowship in Neuromuscular Disease at Strong Memorial Hospital in Rochester in Experimental Therapeutics. He has received a number of grants for DM research and has published numerous results in professional journals. He is now beginning to focus on the treatment phase of research for myotonic dystrophy. For further information on Dr. Thornton click this link to URMC.