The simple acts of walking, breathing, or talking with a friend are not possible for people with damaged or aged neuromuscular systems, which connect the brain to muscles. Parkinson’s Disease, Amyotrophic Sclerosis (ALS), Charcot-Marie-Tooth (CMT) disease, Spinal Muscular Atrophy (SMA) and Menkes Disease are a few of the conditions caused by damage to this critical system.
Degenerative neuromuscular diseases strike especially hard at juvenile victims and are associated with aging and traumatic injury as well. There are few therapies that restore neuromuscular function and enable a normal life. Understanding and treating the loss of muscular control during aging, in response to trauma and in disease requires insights from multiple systems and approaches.
The intensely collaborative approach of the Bond LSC brings together outstanding neuromuscular disease researchers who focus on unifying principles and mechanisms in more than a dozen different genetic or environmental conditions that lead to neuromuscular degeneration.
They employ the latest imaging, computational, genomic and analytical methods to fully understand how nerves and muscles interact and how to keep those connections intact. Our investigators find new approaches to therapies through comparative studies that identify the commonalities among many different neurodegenerative diseases.