May 9, 2016
The FSHD Global Research Foundation is an FSHD patient organization based in Sydney, Australia, focused on funding research projects with high translational potential. Liv Hibbitt, the Medical Science Liaison for FSHD Global wrote a piece accessible to the lay audience explaining our CRISPRi/dCas9 approach to FSHD. Thanks Liv!
Please visit their site for information on how to support FSHD research and/or attend the Sydney Chocolate Ball on May 28th, 2016.
Peter Jones Appointed as a Member of SMEP
April 30, 2016
Peter Jones was selected to be a standing member (4 year term) of the Skeletal Muscle and Exercise Physiology (SMEP) study section at NIH.
April 18, 2016
Peter Jones was interviewed online for AMIS FSH. We discussed Takako's Drosophila work, Charis' CRISPR work, and our lab using FSHD as a model for studying epigenetics. In addition, talk bounced around the prospects for therapy development and clinical trials in FSHD. Thank you to Pierre Laurian for setting this up and Hicham Alaoui for conducting the interview in English and providing translation to French. The edited video will be online sometime in May. Stay tuned.
March 21, 2016
The FSH Society took over the famed parquet floor at the Garden for some round-robin 5 on 5 basketball to raise money for FSHD research. The Acceleron Pharma (Cambridge, MA) team took home the adult category and the Mouse Specifics (Framingham, MA) team took home the youth division. We met up with the basketball teams afterwards for dinner, talks, and an auction at the Causeway Restaurant across the street, after which the whole gang went back to watch the pros and took in the Celtics — Magic game back at the TD Garden (won by the Celtics)!
March 4, 2016
Our characterization of transgenic Drosophila lines carrying DUX4-fl or FRG1 under control of the GAL4 binary expression system was published in PLoS ONE.
February 29, 2016
Congratulations to the FSH Society, founded 25 years ago by Daniel Perez and Steve Jacobsen, and THANK YOU from the Jones lab. We have greatly appreciated the support of the FSHS over the years. Funding from the FSH Society allows us to perform higher risk / higher reward type work and to gather critical preliminary data that we can leverage into larger grants. Seed funding from the FSH Society ultimately results in a greater impact on our understanding of the FSHD pathogenic mechanism and in carving out novel therapeutic avenues to investigate.
Check out the link and the first edition of FSH Watch; we have really come a long way! Thank you for recognizing our CRISPR work as one of the FSH Society's favorite accomplishments over the past 25 years.
February 23, 2016
Our Forum article "Scalpel or Straitjacket: CRISPR/Cas9 Approaches for Muscular Dystrophies" was published on line in Trends in Pharmacological Sciences
Our Forum Article "Scalpel or Straitjacket: CRISPR/Cas9 Approaches for Muscular Dystrophies" was published online in Trends in Pharmacological Sciences. We discuss advantages and drawbacks of differing strategies for FSHD and DMD. Both diseases are amenable to genome editing with AAV-delivered Cas9 nuclease or modulation of gene expression using the dead Cas9 (dCas9) fusions, with the KRAB repressor for FSHD or the VP64 transactivator for DMD.
