Matthew Wood

Professional background

My current positions are as University Lecturer at the University of Oxford and Fellow and Tutor in Medicine at Somerville College in Oxford. I trained in Medicine at the University of Cape Town and worked in neurology and neurosurgery before completing a DPhil in Oxford in 1993. I currently lead a research group in molecular neuroscience based in Oxford, whose main focus is to investigate and develop nucleic acid-based gene therapies for neurological and muscle disease. Aside from the antisense exon skipping work, our principal focus is the study and application of RNA interference methods and tools to the silencing of genes underlying muscle and nerve diseases. Our principal sources of funding come from the UK Medical Research Council, the BBSRC, The Wellcome Trust, The Muscular Dystrophy Campaign, The Muscular Dystrophy Association of Ireland, The Parkinson’s Disease Society and Ataxia UK.

Work related to the exon skipping project

The work in my lab related to exon skipping for Duchenne muscular dystrophy (DMD) is carried out principally by a post-doctoral research fellow, Dr Haifang Yin.
The main focus of this work is the study of new antisense oligonucleotide (AO) chemistries, including the Peptide Nucleic Acid (PNA) chemistry, and the identification of novel peptides and the development of methods to enhance the systemic delivery of AOs.

Relevant references

1. Yin H, Moulton HM, Betts C, Seow Y, Boutilier J, Iverson PL, Wood MJ. Hum Mol Genet. (2009) A fusion peptide directs enhanced systemic dystrophin exon skipping and functional restoration in dystrophindeficient mdx mice. Human Molecular Genetics. Aug 18. [Epub ahead of print] 

2. Scholefield J,Greenberg LJ, Weinberg MS, Arbuthnot PB, Abdelgany A and Wood MJ. Design of RNAi hairpins for mutation-specific silencing of ataxin-7 and correction of a SCA7 phenotype. PLoS ONE (2010) In Press 

3. Jagannath A and Wood MJA (2009) Localization of double-stranded small interfering RNA to cytoplasmic processing bodies is Ago2 dependent and results in up-regulation of GW182 and Argonaute-2. Molecular Cell Biology Jan;20(1):521-9 

4. Kinali M, Arechavala-Gomeza V, Feng L, Cirak S, Hunt D, Adkin C, Guglieri M, Ashton E, Abbs S, Nihoyannopoulos P, Garralda ME, Rutherford E, McCulley C, Poppwell L, Graham I, Dickson G, Wood M, Wells DJ, Wilton S, Holt T, Kole R, Straub V, Bushby K, Sewry CA, Morgan JE, Muntoni F. Local Restoration of Dystrophin Expression in Duchenne Muscular Dystrophy: A Single Blind, Placebo-controlled Dose Escalation Study Using Morpholino Antisense Oligomer AVI-4658. Lancet Neurol. 2009 8(10):918-28 

5. HaiFang Yin, Hong M Moulton, Yiqi Seow, Corinne Boyd, Patrick Iverson and Wood MJA (2008) Peptide-conjugated antisense oligonucleotides restore muscle and cardiac dystrophin expression and function. Human Molecular Genetics Dec 15;17(24):3909-18 

6. Yin H, Lu Q and Wood MJA (2007) Peptide nucleic acids and PNA conjugates for dystrophin exon skipping in the mdx mouse. Molecular Therapy Oct 30; [Epub ahead of print] 

Links

http://www.dpag.ox.ac.uk/academic_staff/matthew_wood

http://www.neuroscience.ox.ac.uk/directory/matthew-wood

Contact details

Dr Matthew JA WOOD
Department of Physiology, Anatomy and Genetics
University of Oxford
South Parks Road
Oxford
OX1 3QX
United Kingdom
Tel: +44 (1) 865 272419
Fax: +44 (1) 865 272420
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