Another step in his animal research will likely involve MU's College of Veterinary Medicine. The college's dean, Joe Kornegay, maintains one of the best colonies of dogs with muscular dystrophy in the nation. The dogs come closer still to mimicking MD in people.

Kornegay, a veterinary neurologist, has been pursuing his own line of MD research. Instead of using viral vectors, he has been part of a team that has been trying to repair mutated dystrophin genes with a kind of "genetic surgery." They have been giving the genes short strands of nucleic acid that trigger the DNA to repair itself.

Duan is writing a grant application with Kornegay to try his viral vector techniques on the dogs as well. Kornegay's dog colony, in fact, was one of the factors that attracted Duan to MU. Another was its location in the heartland.

Both he and his wife, Yongping Yue, grew up in Lanzhou, a city of about 1.3 million people in central China, a region roughly comparable to the U.S. Midwest. His wife could never get used to the gritty urban life of Philadelphia when he was at the University of Pennsylvania. Columbia is more to their taste.

Yue has also developed an interest in biology and become an indispensable member of Duan's research team. Although her college degree is in business, Duan persuaded her to work in his lab. "People told me if you want to be an independent researcher you need good technicians," Duan said. "I gave her a sales pitch."

Yue caught on to lab work quickly. "The more she learned about it, the more she liked it," Duan said. "She can work with animals. She can do molecular biology. She just has fabulous hands at the bench."

It's perhaps not surprising that Duan's "sales pitch" to his wife paid off. His confidence is one of his most winning traits, as is his optimism that his team and others are finally homing in on a muscular dystrophy cure. Duan is currently refining his gene-splitting technique to make it easier and more efficient. And he's planning to try putting a gene for a free-radical scavenger into his virus vector. The idea is that free-radical injury may contribute to muscle destruction in muscular dystrophy. Meanwhile, his colleague Chamberlain at the University of Washington is pursuing human trials with the microgene. In short, Duan says with a smile, "We're getting there."

Published by the Office of Research.

©2006 Curators of the University of Missouri. Click here to contact the editor.