THE FIORILLO LAB SITE
A bit about me:
Right before I started grad school, I volunteered at a Muscular Dystrophy Association Camp where I worked with hundreds of kids with muscular dystrophies and other neuromuscular disorders. This experience forever changed my life. It single handedly changed the course of my research career, one in which I am committed, passionate and unwavering towards the goal of finding viable therapeutics to improve the lives of kids with muscle diseases.
In our lab, the major prerequisite is that you are passionate about researching muscle disease and are excited and willing to learn whatever techniques and concepts are necessary to move your project forward!
Learn more about our research and areas of study below.
ABOUT OUR LAB
We Are Passionate About Our Research of Pediatric Muscle Disorders
Our laboratory has a strong focus on Duchenne Muscular Dystrophy (DMD), a progressive muscle wasting disease caused by the absence of dystrophin protein. To restore dystrophin, a personalized medicine approach called exon skipping has been given conditional approval for treatment of DMD patients. However, the amount of dystrophin restoration that occurs through exon skipping is inconsistent, and patchy. In our laboratory we employ a variety of techniques to understand and improve dystrophin rescue in DMD. This includes investigating microRNAs that target and downregulate dystrophin, understanding the crosstalk between muscle and the immune system, determining how a secondary dystrophin deficiency might impact other muscle disorders and characterizing novel models of microRNA deletion that my affect the pathophysiology of muscle disorders.
CONTACT US
We are located at Children's National Hospital in Washington, DC, two miles from the Capitol Building. Our academic affiliation is with The George Washington University School of Medicine and Health Sciences.
Children's National Hospital
Center for Genetic Medicine Research
111 Michigan Ave. NW; Washington DC 20010
The George Washington University School Medicine & Health Sciences
Departments of Genomics and Precision Medicine and Pediatrics
Office phone: 202.476.2472