News
Conference Announcement: MITO2019 in Toronto 8-9th Nov
MITO2019 is the annual meeting for mitoNET and the MitoCanada Foundation and serves as the main education & networking event for mitoNET. This year it is being held at the Courtyard by Marriott Downtown hotel in Toronto. With a theme of “The Power of Mitochondria to transform human health”, it aims to present the latest…
A new arrival accompanied by a new publication
The Lochmüller lab is pleased to welcome Dr. Emily O’Connor to the group in Ottawa. Emily marked her arrival in the best possible way, with a new publication in the journal Cells, as part of their special issue entitled 150 Years of Motor Endplate: Molecules, Cells, and Relevance of a Model Synapse. This new study,…
New Publication: Analysis of the functional capacity outcome measures for myotonic dystrophy
Being able to accurately and reliably asses functional capacity in people with myotonic dystrophy type 1 (DM1) is paramount to monitor disease progression and assess the effects of therapeutic interventions. However, this can be problematic when patients have differing severities of symptoms, ages of onset, body compositions, and sex. For these reasons, the international ‘outcome…
Foundation grant success for the Lochmüller Lab!
We are thrilled to announce that our Foundation Grant application on Precision Health for Neuromuscular Diseases (NMD) has been funded in the Canadian Institute for Health Research’s 2018 – 2019 competition. The overarching goal of our translational research program funded through this award is to understand the molecular pathogenesis of NMDs in order to improve…
New publication: De-duplicating patient records from three independent data sources reveals the incidence of rare neuromuscular disorders in Germany
Patients with long-term, complex conditions like neuromuscular diseases may receive diagnosis, care and treatment in several different centres, each of which then holds an individual piece of the patient’s complete medical record. These records must be kept confidential to protect the patient’s privacy, but these important privacy restrictions also make it more challenging to link…
New publication: Increasing phenotypic annotation improves the diagnostic rate of exome sequencing in a rare neuromuscular disorder
How can we use phenotypic descriptions to aid genetic diagnosis starting with hundreds of rare variants from next-generation sequencing results? How comprehensively should a doctor annotate a patient’s phenotype to help identify the causative variant? These questions are increasingly relevant for doctors seeing undiagnosed patients, but data showing how phenotypic annotation can be used to…
Hanns Lochmüller is awarded prestigious Tier 1 Canada Research Chair in neuromuscular genomics and health
We are thrilled to announce that Hanns has been awarded a Canada Research Chair (CRC) in Neuromuscular Genomics and Health. The announcement was made at a ceremony at the University of Victoria at noon today. The prestigious Tier 1 CRC awards are for outstanding researchers acknowledged by their peers as world leaders in their fields.…
PhD Viva Success
We are delighted to announce the success of one of Hanns’s UK students. Emily O’Connor, jointly supervised by Hanns and Professor Clarke Slater, successfully defended her thesis work this week and will be awarded a PhD from Newcastle University following submission of minor corrections. Emily was awarded her PhD for her thesis entitled “The role…
New publication: “Be an ambassador for change that you would like to see”: a call to action to all stakeholders for co-creation in healthcare and medical research to improve quality of life of people with a neuromuscular disease
The 2018 ENMC workshop on shared decision-making has resulted in a second valuable publication on the importance of co-creation in healthcare and medical research. In this new article by Ambrosini et al, workshop participants report on their discussions and conclusions on how to make all stakeholders, particularly the patients themselves, equal partners in the decisions…
Double PhD Viva Success
We are thrilled to announce the success of two of Hanns’s UK students. Grace McMacken and Rachel Thompson defended their PhD work this week and will be awarded PhDs from Newcastle University following submission of minor corrections. Both have attained their PhDs by published work, Grace on “Congenital Myasthenic Syndromes and the Therapeutic Modulation of…
New publication: The clinical spectrum of the congenital myasthenic syndrome resulting from COL13A1 mutations
We were pleased to be part of this collaborative effort spearheaded by Pedro M. Rodrıguez Cruz and David Beeson to characterize the mutational and clinical spectrum of congenital myasthenic syndromes (CMS) associated with mutations in COL13A1. This study, which spanned multiple countries, provides a detailed description of the clinical features associated with this particular type…
Lochmüller Lab in the annual Cycle for CHEO
On May 5th, Lochmüller lab & Friends completed the annual Cycle for CHEO ride in Ottawa. They rode as part of a 45 strong CHEO Researchers in Motion Team that together raised more than $11,000. The local police and over 500 volunteers helped with road closures and support throughout the course, which ran through downtown…
Support the Lochmüller Lab in the annual Cycle for CHEO ride!
On May 5th, Lochmüller Lab team members and friends are participating in the annual CN Cycle for CHEO bike ride to raise funds to ensure that CHEO remains a leader in creating better treatment options and finding new cures so that more kids survive cancer. We want to raise awareness and funds for cancer research,…
New publication: quality of life of patients with SMA: a systematic review
Quality of life (QoL) is an important measure to help understand the clinical implications of a disease and inform optimum medical management, as well as to facilitate economic evaluations of new health technologies. As new therapies for spinal muscular atrophy (SMA) enter the market, it is increasingly important to establish measures of QoL in the…
Event: NDF’s 6th Annual Symposium on GNE Myopathy
The Neuromuscular Disease Foundation’s 6th annual symposium and patient day on GNE Myopathy will take place in Philadelphia, USA on Saturday May 4th 2019 from 9:00 am. The venue is the Philadelphia Airport Marriott. This event provides patients and families with a full day of updates on GNE research and care, including up-to-the-minute information and…
New Publication: Salbutamol modifies the neuromuscular junction in a mouse model of ColQ myasthenic syndrome
While we know some drug treatments can help patients with disruption of the neuromuscular junction (NMJ) we do not always know why they work. Determining the mechanism or indeed mechanisms of action of a successful treatment may help us develop even more effective drugs though increasing specificity or reducing side effects. Here we show that…