The Abigail Wexner Research Institute at Nationwide Children
Dublin, United States
I would be honored to serve on the World Muscle Society Executive Board and have been an active participant of the World Muscle Society for the past 10 years. My involvement in WMS activities inspired me to seek out opportunities to contribute and grow the society, including serving on both the annual conference program planning committee and two website committees (Publication highlights and Myology developments across the world). I am excited to welcome everyone and serve as co-host and local organizing committee co-chair for the 2023 WMS meeting in Charleston, South Carolina, USA. The World Muscle Society has been instrumental in my growth as an independent researcher and I look forward to contributing to the ongoing development of WMS through service on the Executive Board.
The World Muscle Society serves to pull together clinicians, researchers, patient advocacy, and industry across the globe to efficiently disseminate new findings and promote networking leading to new and ongoing collaborations. This often results in hastening translation of therapeutic agents from bench to bedside. I will contribute my unique perspective and expertise to guide the development and growth of WMS during these exciting times of rapid knowledge expansion and clinical trial advancements by identifying opportunities to expand WMS membership, diversifying educational opportunities and access to WMS resources, expanding contributions from clinicians and researchers in currently underrepresented regions to promote WMS as a leading resource for neuromuscular education, networking, and collaboration.
Dr. Lindsay Alfano is a clinician and researcher serving as faculty in the Center for Gene Therapy at Nationwide Children’s Hospital. She strives to elevate the standard of care for individuals with neuromuscular disorders through quality training and mentorship programs to advance provider knowledge and awareness, as well as developing and promoting optimal assessment tools to measure change in movement abilities while minimizing the burden of testing. As a physical therapist, Dr. Alfano contributes integrally to planning and designing clinical trials, including first-in-human studies conducted in the Center, and contributes to protocol development, outcome measure selection, statistical analysis, and interpretation for ongoing clinical trials. In her current role, she has co-developed novel outcomes including the ACTIVE & ACTIVE-mini systems, 100-meter timed test, and the Neuromuscular Gross Motor Outcome (GRO) and leads clinical trial readiness studies in rare and ultrarare patient cohorts. Her research goals focus on standardizing training in rare disease, as well as developing and promoting optimal assessment tools to measure change in movement abilities while minimizing the burden of testing.
