Research Overview
The Hammers Lab researches physiological and pathophysiological mechanisms of skeletal and cardiac muscle, particularly those associated with genetic diseases known as muscular dystrophies. The primary motivation of these efforts is to identify potential therapeutic targets that can be exploited to develop treatments for muscle and heart diseases using small molecules and/or adeno-associated virus (AAV)-based gene therapies.
In recent work, the Hammers Lab has identified a group of repurposed drugs that act as “remodeling therapeutics” when used to treat severely diseased muscles by reducing muscle fibrosis and rejuvenating muscle regeneration. These discoveries have led to the initiation of new projects investigating the cellular dynamics that occur during the progression of muscle diseases in the absence and presence of remodeling therapeutics, as well as evaluating the potential for these remodeling therapeutics to improve the long-term efficacy of other current or emerging muscular dystrophy treatment strategies.
What we are doing in our lab
Research Focus Areas
• Striated Muscle Physiology
• Muscular Dystrophy
• Cardiomyopathy
• Therapeutic Development
• Gene Therapy
• Fibrosis
• Regeneration
what you would learn in our lab
Research Tools & Skills
• Cell Culture
• Muscle and Physiological Assessments
• Cloning and Molecular Biology
• AAV production
• Confocal Microscopy
• Histology
• Live Cell Imaging
• Transcriptomics
Current & up to date publications
Recent Publications
Check out the recent publications from the Primary Investigator (PI), Dr. David Hammers
Contact the PI
Dr. David Hammers
dhammers@ufl.edu
