Friends of FSH Research, based in Kirkland, WA. is thrilled to announce that a $6.3 million, 5-year National Institutes of Health (N.I.H.) grant for FSH research has been awarded to the Seattle-based research consortium headed by Dr. Stephen Tapscott. This is one of the largest grants ever to be awarded for Facioscapulohumeral Muscular Dystrophy research.

The grant from the Neurological Disorders and Stroke division of the N.I.H. will fund this 5-year research project entitled "The Pathogenesis of FSHD."  This grant will support the work of several researchers, in various laboratories around the world.  The overall project is under the administration of Dr. Tapscott at the Fred Hutchinson Research Center in Seattle, Washington.

The NIH project funding, which began on April 15, will support four different projects in the collaborating laboratories. 

    
Project 1: The genetic and epigenetic basis for FSHD, Silvere van der Maarel, Leiden University Medical Center, Leiden, The Netherlands

Project 2:  RNA regulation in FSHD, Stephen Tapscott, Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center, Seattle, WA

Project 3:   The role of CTCF in chromatin and nuclear organization at the FSHD locus, Galina Filippova, Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center, Seattle, WA

Project 4:   FSH patient derived IPS cells to study the developmental regulation of DUX4 transcription, Dan Miller, University of Washington, Seattle, WA

This collaborative project will work in partnership with Dr. Rabi Tawil at the University of Rochester & utilize the resources of the Wellstone Center there.

Dr. Stephen Tapscott and Dr. Dan Miller were the second research team to receive funding from Friends of FSH Research for their pilot study "FSHMD Related Defects in Human Myogenesis" in 2006. They have continued to receive annual financial support from Friends of FSH Research over the past 4 years. We are extremely grateful to them for their dedication and we are delighted to have helped them earn this grant.