Michael A. Lopez, M.D., Ph.D.Michael A. Lopez, M.D., Ph.D., has received a nearly $1 million grant from the National Institutes of Health’s National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke to expand the current understanding of the role of a TGF-beta transcription factor in the dysregulation of microRNA in Duchenne muscular dystrophy.
Lopez, who is an assistant professor in the Division of Pediatric Neurology in the University of Alabama at Birmingham’s Department of Pediatrics, received the Mentored Clinical Scientist Research Career Development Award.
The grant is designed to provide five years of protected research time, training and mentorship to focus on a specific area.
“This grant will provide scientific training and career mentoring to for me to establish myself as an independent clinician-scientist investigator,” Lopez said. “The specific research molecularly defines the relationship between an important TGF-beta-regulated transcription factor, Smad8, and muscle-enriched microRNAs. The goal is to identify aberrant pathways that can be modulated to mitigate DMD pathophysiology.”
The award will also invest in his laboratory’s overall research interest in DMD and advance understanding of skeletal muscle function in health and disease.
Peter King, M.D., professor and vice chair in the Department of Neurology, and Matthew Alexander, Ph.D., assistant professor in the Division of Pediatric Neurology, will serve as his mentors on this grant (No. 1K08NS120812).