Liza Pon, professor of pathology and cell biology at Columbia University in New York was awarded an MDA research grant totaling $300,000 over three years to study the underlying mechanisms at work in CHKB congenital muscular dystrophy (CMD). Pon also will test whether therapies that promote function of a protein known as the ryanodine receptor (RyR), which plays a critical role in contraction of skeletal and heart muscle, can promote muscle function or prevent muscle degeneration in a mouse model for CHKB CMD and in muscle cells taken from CHKB CMD patients.

Funding for this MDA research grant began Aug. 1, 2015.