Research Resources | FSHD Society

Recruit volunteers for your study

The FSHD Society maintains the world's largest contact registry of individuals with FSHD and their family members. We also have relationships with clinicians and patient organizations around the world. If you would like to recruit volunteers for a study, please contact info@fshdsociety.org.

Include the following information:

A lay summary of the study
IRB-approved recruitment flyer
Contact information for the study coordinator
Timeframe for recruitment.
The geographic region you wish to recruit in
Basic inclusion criteria.

We will discuss the recruitment campaign details with you before initiating any outreach.

FSHD Clinical Trial Research Network

The FSHD Clinical Trial Research Network, launched in 2016 with funding by the FSHD Society, is a cornerstone of our strategy to accelerate the development of treatments. Comprised of leading international FSHD research centers, the CTRN functions as a “lab without walls” with uniform standards and training for assessing patients and sharing data.

U.S. FSHD Registry at the University of Rochester

The National Registry of Myotonic Dystrophy (DM) and Facioscapulohumeral Muscular Dystrophy (FSHD) is maintained at the University of Rochester.

The Registry has over 2,600 well-classified and motivated patients, who have been followed longitudinally for up to 17 years. Research investigators can facilitate their studies by using the registry to receive deidentified data and/or to receive recruitment assistance.

Researchers can: 1) submit an application to use the resources of the Registry; and 2) work with the Registry team to select data or eligible members for their studies.

Learn More & Submit a Request

Coriell Biospecimen Repository

For a listing of cell lines and products available for FSHD research, please click here. The scientific staff at Coriell has been greatly helped by the FSHD Society in acquiring this important resource for the NIGMS Collection. Investigators looking to purchase cell lines should have a current MTA on file with the NIGMS Repository at The Coriell Institute. Complete information can be found at this link.

More Information

The FSHD Society and the Coriell Cell Repositories in Camden, New Jersey, have been working together to bring cell lines from FSHD families into the National Institute for General Medical Sciences Human Genetic Cell Repository. The FSHD Society recruits FSHD patients and family members to donate tissue and cells. The intention is to establish a resource of FSHD materials open to researchers worldwide for a reasonable cost. Researchers can be assured of the quality of the cell lines and DNA from the NIGMS Collection, which Coriell initiated at the invitation of the NIH. All cells are free of microbial contamination, including mycoplasma, and have been assigned a microsatellite identity profile. All members of any submitted family are verified by Coriell for relationship before they are included in the collection. Coriell therefore supplies validated, uncontaminated cell cultures to established researchers who can be certain that the cells they receive are the cells they ordered. The extensive quality control that Coriell uses to assess isolated DNA includes pulse field gel electrophoresis and long-range PCR. Finally, a clinical profile of each affected family member from the FSHD collection will be provided in the electronic catalog.

Learn More about how to order

UMass Wellstone Center for FSHD

University of Massachusetts Medical School UMMS Senator Paul D. Wellstone Muscular Dystrophy Cooperative Research Center for FSHD. The UMass Wellstone Cente r distributes FSHD and control primary skeletal muscle cell strains and immortalized clonal cell lines, established on July 12, 2011.

More Information

FSHD Muscle Cell Distribution
FSHD and familial control primary skeletal muscle cell strains and immortalized clonal cell lines are available for distribution from the NIH UMMS Senator Paul D. Wellstone Muscular Dystrophy Cooperative Research Center for FSHD Research.

Primary cell strains
Primary cells from multiple family cohorts are now available to the research community. Each cohort includes cells isolated from the biceps and deltoid muscles of at least one FSHD patient with a confirmed 4qA contraction, and one familial control subject without a contraction. Clinical and diagnostic information (e.g. age, gender, muscle strength, EcoRI/BlnI fragment length, etc) will be provided.

Primary cells have been sorted for the CD56 cell surface marker to enrich for myogenic cells. The majority of cell strains have undergone no more than ~20 population doublings (PD) prior to freezing, and under our culture conditions, cells can typically be expanded to at least a total of 35 PD (i.e. ~15 additional PD). Cells have been frozen in small aliquots in order to distribute as widely as possible.

Immortalized cell clones
Immortalized cell clones from 1 cohort (with two cohorts pending) are also available. Primary cells were immortalized by lentiviral transfection of CDK4 and hTERT and selected CD56+ cell clones were expanded. These clones have been cultured successfully to >200-300 PD; however, changes in differentiation morphology over time may be observed. Complete details regarding immortalized cell clone generation and phenotype may be found in the article by Stadler et al. (2011; Skeletal Muscle 1:12 doi:10.1186/2044-5040-1-12).

Learn More and Request Cells

Brain and Tissue Bank for Developmental Disorders

The Brain and Tissue Bank for Developmental Disorders is a tissue resource center at the University of Maryland in Baltimore. For a list of available FSHD tissue specimens, download the Maryland Tissue Bank Inventory (dated May 8, 2016).

More Information

The mission of the UMB BTB is to advance the research of developmental, neurological and movement disorders. The objective of this human tissue repository is to systematically collect, store, and distribute brain and other tissues for research dedicated to the improved understanding, care and treatment of individuals with these disorders. They have extensive experience in arranging for the rapid retrieval of tissue upon the death of individuals while at home, in hospitals or hospice care. The Bank is also able to assist physicians and researchers who are working with patients who intend to donate tissues at the time of their death.

Learn More and Request Cells

Books and Online Resources

Books, Articles and Journals

Facioscapulohumeral muscular dystrophy. Wikipedia article maintained by the FSH Society Journal Club members.

Facioscapulohumeral Disease. Padberg, G.W.A.M., 1982, Doctoral Thesis, Leiden University. Landmark, classic work. (Free Access.)

Facioscapulohumeral dystrophy: the path to consensus on pathophysiology. Rabi Tawil, Silvère M van der Maarel and Stephen J Tapscott. In Skeletal Muscle. (Free Access.)

Long noncoding RNAs, emerging players in muscle differentiation and disease. Maria Victoria Neguembor, Mathivanan Jothi and Davide Gabellini in Skeletal Muscle. (Free Access.)

Facioscapulohumeral Muscular Dystrophy (FSHD): Clinical Medicine and Molecular Cell Biology. Edited by Meena Upadhhyaya and David Cooper. Taylor and Francis e-Library 2005. View eBook. Purchase from Amazon.

Neuromuscular Disease: From Basic Mechanisms to Clinical Management (Frontiers of Neurology and Neuroscience). Editor: F Deymeer F. Clin Neurosci. Basel, Karger, 2000. vol 18. pp 44-60. On Amazon.

Online Resources

Bloomington Drosophila Stock center distributes drosophila lines for studying DUX4 and FRG1 overexpression under “Genes of interest for muscular dystrophy.”

Entrez Cross Database Search

Exome Aggregation Consortium (ExAC). Curated by Broad Institute. The data set provided on this website spans 60,706 unrelated individuals sequenced as part of various disease-specific and population genetic studies. ExAD is a coalition of investigators seeking to aggregate and harmonize exome sequencing data from a wide variety of large-scale sequencing projects, and to make summary data available for the wider scientific community.

Gene Expression Omnibus (GEO). Search for specific profiles of interest based on gene annotation or pre-computed profile characteristics. Enter search term “FSHD” to locate profiles of interest.

Gene Expression Omnibus (GEO) DataSets Repository. Enter search term “FSHD” to locate experiments of interest.

Leiden Open Variation Database (LOVD) mutation database. Curated by Richard Lemmers. All researchers are encouraged to submit data on FSHD genotypes to LOVD, to facilitate access by the entire research community to information on FSHD mutations.

Microarray Datasets. A directory compiled by Christopher Banerjee.

PEPR Portal at Children’s National Medical Center, Washington DC. The Public Expression Profiling Resource (PEPR) is a Research Center for Genetic Medicine, Children’s National Medical Center,

Washington DC experiment in web-database access to large multi-dimensional data sets using a standardized experimental platform. The primary goal of PEPR is to determine if the larger scientific community can be given simple, intuitive, and user-friendly web-based access to large microarray data sets. Note that all data in PEPR is also available via NCBI GEO

PEPR Portal Search. Enter Project and enter search keyword “FSHD” to access. Please click here.

PubMed. A free database accessing primarily the MEDLINE database of references and abstracts on life sciences and biomedical topics. It is maintained by the United States National Library of Medicine at the National Institutes of Health. To run a PubMed query and search for FSHD and related terms, click here.

UCSC Genome Bioinformatics. This site contains the reference sequence and working draft assemblies for a large collection of genomes. It also provides a portal to the ENCODE project.

Washington University St. Louis Neuromuscular Page: Facioscapulhumeral Muscular Dystrophy. An extensive compendium of scientific information about FSHD. Frequently updated.

NIH ONLINE RESOURCES

Small molecule biologics gene therapy repurposing resources ; lead development, IND enabling studies

Small molecule hit generation, hit to lead and Ind enabling