On the Forefront of Discovery

The mission of finding and developing new, life-changing therapies for people with neurofibromatosis (NF) begins in the research laboratory. The UAB Neurofibromatosis Program supports this vital mission with a robust, innovative research effort. The research program’s overall focus is to establish an understanding of the genetic mechanisms involved in NF so that drug therapies can be developed to restore function to mutated genes.

A team of internationally renowned and dedicated UAB genetic scientists with years of collective expertise conducts innovative studies that are breaking new ground in identifying the genetic mechanisms involved in NF. Because of these collective efforts, UAB has emerged as a national leader at the forefront of such pioneering research advances as the identification of new genes and mutations associated with NF.

This leadership is also evident in UAB’s role as the coordinating center for the NF Clinical Trials Consortium, a collaborative group of 17 medical centers across the country and in Australia dedicated to conducting clinical trials of the most promising drug therapies for all forms of neurofibromatosis.

The state-of-the-art UAB Medical Genomics Laboratory – a cornerstone of genetic research at UAB – currently performs the highest volume of NF genetic testing of any laboratory in the world.

NF research at UAB continues to yield new and exciting findings that are completing the missing pieces of the neurofibromatosis puzzle – one critical piece at a time.