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Welcome to your November update from the World Muscle Society

Our 28th Annual Congress took place in Charleston, South Carolina, USA last month. In case you missed them, you can see all the photos from the event on our website. We also created daily highlight videos, which you can watch here. 

Following a very successful 2023 Congress, we are able to return to "business as usual" at the WMS. For our more involved members, this means making progress against our priorities, including our Equity, Diversity and Inclusion (EDI) and sustainability strategies, strengthening our committees and sharing more of our work. 

While our annual Congress remains an important priority in the WMS calendar, we are also keen to continue to grow our membership, and work to advance the science of neuromuscular disorders and the care for people who live with them.

One of the things that came across most strongly at the recent Congress was the value of networking and the way that networking enables collaboration and exchange of ideas. 

With that in mind, I'm pleased to share that this newsletter contains two opportunities to collaborate with projects in our field.

Firstly, we have a WMS Student Member who is conducting a survey to understand the attitudes and practices of clinicians in using, interpreting, and reporting genetic test results to neuromuscular patients in clinical settings. There are more details below and a link to the full story on our website. 



Secondly, we have a survey about ClinGen and the tools and resources related to genetics our members use. More information and the survey link below. If either of these projects is relevant to you, I hope you will take the time to contribute to the surveys as we grow our knowledge across the field of neuromuscular disorders. 

We are also looking for a new Pre-Congress Teaching Course chair and have shared two recent publication highlights in this newsletter. 
 
The WMS Programme Committee, under our new chair, Gina Ravenscroft, will soon meet to decide the topics for next year’s annual congress in Prague. We hope to see you in Czechia in 2024!

I wish you the very best.

Volker Straub
WMS President 
News
Ashley Smith is a second-year genetic counselling graduate student at Virginia Commonwealth University in Richmond, Virginia.

She's looking for US-based neurologists and neuromuscular physicians to complete her short online survey about their experience with neuromuscular genetic testing in their clinical practice. If members are also willing to do a short follow-up interview with Ashely over Zoom to further explore themes addressed in the survey, that would be great!

You can read more about Ashley's study and find a link to the survey on our website.
 

The National Institutes of Health (NIH) funded initiative, ClinGen, exists to build a resource that defines the clinical relevance of genes and variants for use in precision medicine and research. 

As part of that initiative, the University of North Carolina is conducting a survey to help understand the tools and resources related to genetics that professionals in our field currently use. The questions include whether you are familiar with or use ClinGen products. 

Find the link to the survey on our website.
 
Could You Be Our Next Pre-Congress Teaching Course Chair?
Our Pre-Congress Teaching Course (PCTC) is highly thought of in our field and this year we had more in-person attendees than ever before. 

Next year will be our PCTC chair, Benedikt Schoser's final year running the course and he's keen to start handing over to his successor. 

We are looking for applications now for a future chair who can work with Benedikt next year and take on the responsibility for the course from 2025. 

If you are interested please send your CV and a covering email describing your relevant experience and skills to office@worldmusclesociety.org. The successful candidate will become a non-voting member of the WMS Executive Board.
 
Dates For Your Diary
 
Publication Highlights
Our publication highlights enable us to share emerging science for the benefit of WMS members. 

This month's highlight comes from Human Molecular Genetics and describes a study to further expand the clinical phenotype of PYROXD1 disease to include features of a congenital connective tissue disorder. 

You can see an entire library of our publication highlights on our website.
And because summer ran straight into Congress preparations, we didn't have the opportunity to share the August publication highlight with you. 

This publication highlight comes from BMJ Journals and describes research into methods for discovery and detection of antibodies including those that target complex antigens. 

Thank you to our Publication Highlights Committee for sharing these fascinating insights. 
 
Jobs
We have several relevant job opportunities in the field on our website now.

Please use the form on here to submit a job posting.

The job posting will be reviewed before being published and also shared on WMS social media platforms.
 
 

Published on 23 November 2023.

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