UF Health has been designated by the NIH as one of six centers to help translate scientific findings into strategies to improve the lives of muscular dystrophy patients. H. Lee Sweeney, Ph.D., director of the UF Myology Institute and the Thomas H. Maren, M.D., eminent scholar chair in pharmacology and therapeutics in the UF College of Medicine, received a five-year, $10.76 million grant to study ways to address muscle degeneration caused by the disease. He will serve as director of the newly designated Senator Paul D. Wellstone Muscular Dystrophy Cooperative Research Center at UF Health. Muscular dystrophy is a genetic disease that causes muscle weakness and muscle loss, and can lead to muscle being replaced by fat or scar tissue. Some forms of the disease affect the heart muscle. “The leadership and knowledge provided by Dr. Sweeney and his research colleagues will allow our Center to pursue scientific discoveries to improve muscular dystrophy therapies for people throughout Florida and around the world,” said David S. Guzick, M.D., Ph.D., senior vice president for health affairs at UF and president of UF Health. — Doug Bennett