Peter and Takako Jones Lab
University of Nevada, Reno School of Medicine
June 9, 2018
The Jones lab attended the bi-annual FSH Society Patient Connect meeting in Las Vegas. We met with patients and families, answering questions and discussing research progress. Dr. Charis Himeda was a panelist for teh session on FSHD Therapeutic Development and discussed her CRISPR work.
May 30, 2018
Peter Jones was invited to attend the inaugural Gordon Research Conference on Epigenomics of Diabetes and other Metabolic Diseases in Hong Kong. Dr. Jones presented a talk, "FSHD is a model for epigenetic mechanisms, diagnostics, and therapy", using FSHD as an example for how to approach epigenetic diseases and epigenetic aspects for genetic diseases.
April 24, 2018
Congratulations to Monique Ramirez, an undergraduate researcher in the Jones Lab, whoe received a 2018 Undergraduate Research Opportunities Program award from the Nevada INBRE for the summer. This award provides a stipend for the summer, weekly career development workshops, and a research poster session in August for presenting her work. She will be working on characterizing the new FSHD-like mouse models the lab had developed.
April 20, 2018
Dr. Charis Himeda's paper "Identification of epigenetic regulators of DUX4-fl for targeted tehrapy of facioscapulohumeral muscular dystrophy" was published today in Molecular Therapy. This work shows that the SMARCA5, ASH1L, and BAZ1A proteins each are highly specific FSHD thereapeutic targets for designing small inhibitory molecules.
February 28, 2018
Today is the International Rare Disease Day. UNR Med features the rare disease research being performed in the Jones and Burkin labs at UNR Med, Dept of Pharmacology.
February 27, 2018
Dr. Peter Jones was invited to present "Targeting FSHD epigenetics for diagnostics and therapy" at the Rare Disease Desert Symposium, sponsored by Icagen, Inc in Tucsan, Arizona.
February 8, 2018
The initial characterization of Dr. Takako Jones' FSHD-like cre-inducible transgenic mouse model was published online today in PLoS One. This highly versitile model based on investigator controlled expression of the pathogenic DUX4 gene is the first phenotypic mouse that shows FSHD-like muscle histopathology and weakness. This mouse model is easy to breed, healthy in the absence of cre induction, and can readily be scaled up and used for preclinical testing of potential FSHD therapeutics targeting DUX4 mRNA and protein. In addition, this mouse is already available from Jackson Labs for ease of import into academic and pharmaceutical labs.
http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0192657
