Cores
The Nationwide Children's Hospital Wellstone Muscular Dystrophy Specialized Research Center contains the Cores that support its mission.
Administrative Core
The Administrative Core (Dr. Flanigan, Director; Dr. Martin, Co-director; Ashley Madeley, administrator) is responsible for the organization, tracking and reporting of all MDSRC activities.
Training Core
The Wellstone Training Core (Dr. Harper, Director; Dr. Rafael-Fortney, Associate Director) is centered around the annual Nationwide Children’s/OSU Myology Course, which is provided at no cost to trainees. It currently accepts 70 trainees per year (half clinically based and half lab-based) for an intensive one-week course that includes joint morning lectures followed by afternoon wet lab electives (for PhD trainees) or clinical training (for MDs). To date, more than 770 trainees have attended this course, with many continuing to high profile positions in muscle research. In this Core, we will build upon these successes in order to recruit, train and retain more young investigators in the field of muscular dystrophy research.
Cell Line and Serum Banking Core
The Muscular Dystrophy Cell and Serum Banking Shared Resource Core (Dr. Nicolau, Director; Dr. Flanigan, Associate Director) serves as a resource for each of the projects and for the Wellstone MDSRC network by providing patient-derived fibroblasts, myoblasts and serum samples to both internal and external investigators to serve as tools for basic science discovery and therapeutic development.