The Love Story Behind Our Name

ML Bio Solutions was formally founded in 2018, yet the company’s founders have been dedicated to finding a cure for LGMD2I for close to twenty years.

In 2001, Hugh L. McColl, Jr. learned that a family member had been diagnosed with LGMD2I. Dr. Jeffrey Rosenfeld at Carolinas Medical Center (now Atrium Health) approached McColl in 2002 about funding research to find a cure for LGMD2I. After consulting with wife, daughter and son-in-law, the McColl and Lockwood families enthusiastically committed a major gift to start this critical research.

A global search for talented researchers led to hiring Dr. Qi Long Lu, MD, PhD, who in 2018 published seminal data (Cataldi, et al, 2018) that would provide the foundation for ML Bio Solutions. In this paper, Dr. Lu and his team demonstrated that a prodrug based on sugar overcomes the inefficiencies in the mutated FKRP gene. ML Bio Solutions was founded based upon this research, and the hope that a treatment for LGMD2I may be available in the future.

The McColl-Lockwood family is still actively involved with the McColl-Lockwood Lab and ML Bio Solutions with Luther Lockwood serving as the company’s founding board chairman and president. The organization is committed to quickly, safely, and effectively advancing potential treatment options for LGMD2I.