Will Ward’s birthday falls on Rare Disease Day (Feb. 28). That’s an interesting coincidence because he has a rare disease: X-linked myotubular myopathy (MTM), a rare, muscle-weakening disease that affects only boys. Originally on Snapchat, this video captures the Ward family’s recent visit to the lab of Alan Beggs, PhD to learn more about MTM research.

Beggs, director of the Manton Center for Orphan Disease Research at Boston Children’s Hospital, has known Will since he was a newborn in intensive care. In this lab walk-though you’ll see a freezer filled with muscle samples, stored in liquid nitrogen; muscle tissue under a microscope; gene sequencing to identify mutations causing MTM and other congenital myopathies and a testing station to measure muscle function in samples taken from animal models.

Beggs’s work, which began more than 20 years ago, led to pivotal studies in male Labrador retrievers who happen to have the same mutation and are born with a canine form of MTM. By adding back a healthy copy of the gene, Beggs’s collaborators got the dogs back on their feet running around again. (Read about Nibs, a female MTM carrier whose descendants took part in these studies.)

Based on the canine results, a clinical trial is now testing gene therapy in boys under the age of 5 with MTM. The phase I/II trial aims to enroll 12 boys and measure their respiratory and motor function and muscle structure after being dosed with a vector carrying a corrected MTM gene. In the meantime, observational and retrospective studies are characterizing the natural history of boys with MTM.

Learn more about the Manton Center for Orphan Disease Research.