Collecting tissue samples from people with nerve disease

This study asks people with Charcot-Marie-Tooth disease (a genetic nerve disorder that affects movement and sensation) and healthy volunteers to donate small biological samples—skin, blood, or saliva. Researchers will use these samples to create special stem cells that can grow into any type of human cell, and to study the genetic instructions that may be causing disease. This approach allows scientists to study nerve cells in the lab without needing to remove them directly from patients' bodies.

Charcot-Marie-Tooth disease is caused by problems in a person's genes, but scientists still have much to learn about which genes are involved and how to fix them. By creating stem cells from patient samples, researchers can study disease in a lab dish and test new treatments—something that would be difficult or impossible to do in patients directly.