Lochmüller Lab

We are very pleased to announce the success of several Lochmüller Lab team members in recent fellowship and scholarship competitions.

Jarred Lau

Master’s student Jarred Lau received a Scholarship in Translational Research (STaR) award from the Éric Poulin Centre for Neuromuscular Disease. Jarred is investigating novel genes and molecular mechanisms in congenital myasthenic syndromes, using exome analysis to discover novel genes and working with zebrafish models to study disease mechanisms.

Alex Manta

Medical student Alex Manta was awarded a summer studentship from the University of Ottawa for a three-month summer placement with the Lochmüller Lab. Although Covid-19 restrictions necessitated a change from his original wetlab project, Alex will now be working on a project to capture detailed evidence on treatments for metabolic myopathies linked to their genetic cause. This will become part of the “treatabolome” database, an initiative launched by the European Solve-RD consortium that aims to ensure that patients with treatable conditions have potential treatments flagged up at the time of diagnosis.

Emily O’Connor

Postdoctoral fellow Emily O’Connor had her international research scholarship from the Association Française contre les Myopathies, the French Muscular Dystrophy Association, renewed for a second year. Emily will continue her work characterising the role of novel CMS-related genes at the neuromuscular junction with the aim of understanding the molecular pathways involved and trialling novel treatment strategies in animal models to provide preclinical data supporting translation to the clinic.

Rachel Thompson

Postdoctoral fellow Rachel Thompson was awarded a three-year postdoctoral fellowship from the Canadian Institutes for Health Research (CIHR). Rachel’s research project, Solving unsolved neuromuscular diseases: harnessing the power of phenotype and data integration strategies to optimise diagnosis and discovery, will allow her to continue her work to make better use of existing data to improve diagnostic rates.

Congratulations to all our researchers!