Cure SMA has awarded a $75,000 research grant to Robert Kalb, MD, at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine, for his project, “Effects of diminished SMN on segmental spinal cord innervation of motor neurons.” Dr. Kalb and his team have conducted studies that indicate that there are abnormal connections to motor neurons in their worm

Cure SMA has awarded a $150,000 research grant to Umrao Monani, PhD, at Columbia University, for his project, “SMA modulators as a means to revealing disease mechanisms.” Dr. Monani and his team have generated SMA model mice and shown that their genetic background can alter disease severity. By studying these mice, they have identified two

Cure SMA has awarded a $150,000 research grant to Allison Ebert, PhD, at the Medical College of Wisconsin, for her project, “Role of astrocyte-produced miR-146a in SMA pathology.” SMA is caused by mutations in the SMN1 gene resulting in low levels of SMN protein, which is expressed in every cell in the body. The goal