Newswise — Beginning January 1, 2017, Kevin Flanigan, MD, is the new director of the Center for Gene Therapy and the Neuromuscular Disorders program at Nationwide Children’s Hospital. Dr. Flanigan is co-director of the Nationwide Children’s Muscular Dystrophy Association Clinic and director of the new Center of Research Translation in Muscular Dystrophy Therapeutics, funded by the National Institute of Arthritis and Musculoskeletal and Skin Diseases. He also is a professor of Pediatrics and Neurology at The Ohio State University.
“Naming Dr. Flanigan as director of the Center for Gene Therapy and the Neuromuscular Disorders program at Nationwide Children’s will allow us to seamlessly continue our trajectory of outstanding care and innovative research that Jerry Mendell, MD, began at Nationwide Children’s more than a decade ago,” says John Barnard, MD, chief of Pediatrics and president of The Research Institute at Nationwide Children’s.
After more than 12 years in these leadership roles, Dr. Mendell will now fully devote his time toward his many gene-based therapy research initiatives at Nationwide Children’s. “Dr. Mendell’s life has been dedicated to caring for children affected by neuromuscular disease and searching for the most effective therapies to cure these disorders. His work over the past four decades has made an immeasurable impact locally and around the world. We are excited and proud that his research and clinical expertise remains here in Columbus at Nationwide Children’s,” notes Dr. Barnard.
Dr. Flanigan received his Bachelor of Music at the University of Illinois and his MD from Rush University in Chicago. He performed an internship in Internal Medicine at the University of Michigan before completing a neurology residency, neurology chief residency, and neuromuscular disease fellowship at The Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore. He completed a lab-based post-doctoral fellowship in Human Molecular Biology and Genetics at the University of Utah before joining the faculty there. Dr. Flanigan joined Nationwide Children’s in 2009, after 14 years at the University of Utah where he held faculty appointments in Neurology, Pediatrics, Pathology and Genetics.
Dr. Flanigan is a member of the executive board of the World Muscle Society; a fellow of the American Academy of Neurology and the American Neurological Association; a member of the Musculo-Skeletal Committee of the American Society of Gene and Cell Therapy; and the current chairperson of TREAT-NMD, the international alliance focused on establishing the infrastructure to ensure promising new therapies reach patients as quickly as possible. He is the founder and organizer of the Nationwide Children’s Hospital/Ohio State University Myology Course, attended annually by 60 post-doctoral trainees from around the world. He was a founding co-editor of PLoS Currents: Muscular Dystrophy; is a member of the editorial boards of Neuromuscular Disorders and Journal of Neuromuscular Diseases; and has contributed more than 125 peer-reviewed articles and book chapters to the literature. This year, Dr. Flanigan received a prestigious $7.5 million Center for Research Translation grant from the NIH’s National Institute for Arthritis and Musculoskeletal and Skin Diseases to accelerate discovery in muscular dystrophies.
“We are gratified Dr. Flanigan will transition into these leadership roles with his exceptional experience and expertise, while Dr. Mendell continues his groundbreaking clinical and research endeavors here at Nationwide Children’s,” says Dr. Barnard.
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