Asuka Eguchi awarded a Career Development Grant from the Muscular Dystrophy Association
Postdoctoral Fellow Asuka Eguchi
Asuka Eguchi was awarded a prestigious Development Grant from the MDA for her proposal Microdystrophin Design for the Treatment of Dystrophin-Deficient Cardiomyocytes. Duchenne muscular dystrophy (DMD) affects 1 out of 3,500 males. DMD patients exhibit severe muscle degeneration and die of respiratory or heart failure. The project's goal is to distinguish the most effective gene therapy for the heart by comparing how well the different versions of microdystrophins being tested in clinical trials along with minidystrophin identified in a Becker patient with mild dystrophic symptoms rescue disease phenotypes exhibited by DMD cardiomyocytes differentiated from human induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSC-CMs).