Our Sincere Thanks to Our Board and Advisors

Our board and advisors allow us identify the most promising research, conduct due diligence on the researchers, and provide them with ongoing funding and technical assistance. Board members and advisors are pro bono.

Our Board of Directors is composed of seven members with many years of collective experience in philanthropy and business management.

Debra Miller, President
Paul Miller, Secretary/Treasurer
Mike Altman
Ty Ballou
James Herzfeld
Jeffrey Herzfeld
David McManus

Our Science Advisors include Dr. Jeffrey S. Chamberlain and Dr. Kevin P. Campbell, two of the leading scientists in the world working on muscular dystrophy, and most especially Duchenne Muscular Dystrophy.

Jeffrey Chamberlain, PhD, is the principal investigator of the Chamberlain Lab in the Department of Neurology, University of Washington School of Medicine and director of the Senator Paul D. Wellstone Muscular Dystrophy Cooperative Research Center. The main focus of Chamberlain’s Lab is on the muscular dystrophies, primarily Duchenne muscular dystrophy (DMD), with two major goals: to develop a better understanding of the molecular basis of the pathophysiology of the diseases, and to develop gene and cell therapies that will correct and treat the muscular dystrophies. A former staff member of the Muscular Dystrophy Association, he has published widely on muscular dystrophy, and is on the editorial board of several internationally respected medical journals.

Kevin Campbell, PhD, is the Roy J. Carver Biomedical Research Chair in physiology and biophysics at the University of Iowa, where he is also interim chair of the neurology department. The recipient of numerous international science awards, he is an investigator for the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, and a member of the National Academy of Sciences.

Brian Tseng, MD/PhD, is a muscular dystrophy researcher at the University of Colorado Health Sciences Center and a doctor at The Children's Hospital of Denver. Dr. Tseng’s Lab is testing the effect of a membrane sealant on the leaky dystrophin-deficient membranes of skeletal muscle cells. The purpose of this project is to develop an effective treatment that will strengthen the cell membranes, using a chemical called poloxamer 407, as a chemical Band-Aid, patching these holes and tears in the muscle.

Stanley Nelson, MD/PhD, is a Professor at the University of California, Los Angeles’ Departments of Psychiatry & Bio-behavioral Sciences, and Human Genetics. Nelson, a pediatrician and oncologist, developed a method, known as microarraying, that analyzes the expression level of thousands of genes simultaneously. Nelson’s laboratory is focused on developing technology to facilitate the identification of genes that influence complex, multigenic and quantitative traits in humans.

Carrie Miceli, PhD, is a Principal Investigator at the University of California, Los Angeles’ Department of Microbiology and Immunology. Miceli's Lab Group is working on the development of assay systems for small molecule, high throughput screens for muscular dystrophy. The development of cellular reporter assays which model processes relevant to muscular dystrophies will enable high throughput screens of small molecule libraries for the identification of lead compounds which can purturb these processes. Such compounds have tremendous potential as probes for understanding normal and pathologic muscle cell biology and in the development of novel therapeutics for DMD.

Pier Lorenzo Puri, MD/PhD, is Assistant Professor at the Burnham Institute in San Diego, California. Puri’s team discovered that ongoing treatment with the deacetylase inhibitor Trichostatin A, currently under clinical study for breast cancer, restored skeletal muscle mass and prevented the impaired function characteristic of muscular dystrophies. Importantly, these restored muscles showed an increased resistance to contraction-coupled degeneration--the primary mechanism by which muscle function declines in Duchenne muscular dystrophy and related dystrophies.

Legal and strategic advisors include:

Douglas Freeman is a partner in the foundation law firm of Freeman, Freeman & Smiley, and is chairman and National Managing Partner of IFF Advisors. Mr. Freeman assists CureDuchenne in the areas of organizational strategy and development.

Morrison & Foerster, which has an expertise in biotechnology, is CureDuchenne’s legal counsel. In this capacity, the firm reviews and validates the work of applicants for research funds, and negotiates grant contracts.