1.27.20
Lawrence H. Snyder, MD, PhD, professor of neuroscience at the School of Medicine and of psychological and brain sciences in Arts & Sciences, received a five-year $2.55 million grant from the National Eye Institute of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) for research titled “Interhemispheric communication underlying bimanual and eye-hand coordination.”
1.24.20
Daniel Kreisel, MD, PhD, professor of surgery and of pathology and immunology, and Andrew Gelman, professor of surgery, both at the School of Medicine, received a four-year $2.12 million grant from the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) for research titled “The role of ischemia reperfusion injury in lung allograft rejection.”
1.21.20
Jonathan Brestoff, MD, PhD, assistant professor of pathology and immunology at the School of Medicine, received a five-year $1.96 million grant from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) for a project titled “Regulation of innate immune cell responses through cell-to-cell transfer of mitochondria”; and a two-year $60,000 grant from the Children’s Discovery Institute for a project titled “The role of cell-to-cell transfer of mitochondria in regulation of metabolism and obesity.”
1.21.20
Chang Liu, MD, PhD, assistant professor of pathology and immunology at the School of Medicine, received a two-year $300,000 grant from the Edward Mallinckrodt Jr. Foundation for a project titled “Depleting antigen-specific B cells for antibody-mediated graft rejection”; and a one-year, $59,989 grant from The Foundation for Barnes-Jewish Hospital for a project titled “Targeting antigen-specific B cells by HLA-Fc fusion protein for antibody-mediated rejection.”
1.17.20
Cole John Ferguson, MD, an instructor in pathology and immunology at the School of Medicine, received a five-year, $164,015 grant from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) for a project titled “Ubiquitin signaling in epigenetic regulation of neuronal development.”
1.15.20
Mayssa Mokalled, assistant professor of developmental biology, has received a five-year, $1.93 million grant from the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) for her project titled “Mechanisms of glial bridging and neurogenesis during spinal cord regeneration in zebrafish.”
1.13.20
David M. Ornitz, MD, PhD, the Alumni Endowed Professor of Developmental Biology, and Robert Gereau, the Dr. Seymour and Rose T. Brown Professor of Anesthesiology, both at the School of Medicine, received a two-year, $100,000 grant from the Hope Center for Neurological Disorders for their project titled “Determining the pathogenic role of FGFR3 autoantibodies in small fiber neuropathy.”
Also, Ornitz — together with David T. Curiel, MD, PhD, the Distinguished Professor of Radiation Oncology, and Kel Vin Woo, MD, PhD, a fellow in pediatric cardiology — received a three-year, $450,000 grant from the Children’s Discovery Institute for their project titled “Targeting the FGF signaling pathway as a novel therapy for Hypoxia-induced pulmonary hypertension.”
1.13.20
Victoria Church, a postdoctoral research scholar in the lab of Andrew S. Yoo, associate professor of developmental biology at the School of Medicine, received a three-year, $165,000 postdoctoral fellowship award from the William N. & Bernice E. Bumpus Foundation for her project titled “Modeling PD with patient-derived directly reprogrammed neurons.”
1.10.20
Quing Zhu, professor of biomedical engineering at the McKelvey School of Engineering, will work with a team of physicians at the School of Medicine to add an imaging method to the current standard of care for women at high risk for ovarian cancer.
With a five-year $2.55 million grant from the National Cancer Institute of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), the team will use an innovative combined photoacoustic and ultrasound technology (PAT/US), which Zhu and her team developed, to conduct a clinical study. The goal is to determine whether the technology can better detect whether an ovarian mass is cancerous or benign, therefore improving current clinical practice. Read more on the engineering website.
1.7.20
Valeria Cavalli, professor of neuroscience at the School of Medicine, received a $300,000 Stein Innovation Award from Research to Prevent Blindness to explore ways to support the survival or regeneration of cells in the eye in order to prevent blindness caused by glaucoma.
1.3.20
Laura Ibanez, a postdoctoral research associate in neurogenetics and informatics in the laboratory of Carlos Cruchaga at the School of Medicine, has received a $281,370 grant from the Alzheimer’s Drug Discovery Foundation to study gene products associated with Alzheimer’s disease that can be found in the blood. The project will use next-generation sequencing to measure gene products known as cell-free ribonucleic acids (cfRNA) in the blood of Alzheimer’s patients, pre-symptomatic patients and cognitively normal individuals, to create novel prognostic and diagnostic models of Alzheimer’s disease risk and age at onset.
A coalition of philanthropists, including Bill Gates, Jeff Bezos and Leonard A. Lauder, created the Alzheimer’s Drug Discovery Foundation in 2018. They have committed to funding nearly $50 million in research to improve Alzheimer’s treatments.
1.2.20
Three scientists at the School of Medicine and Siteman Cancer Center will receive $600,000 in funding over two years for their innovative approach to detecting a type of advanced prostate cancer.
A test exists that detects resistant tumors in metastatic prostate cancer patients; however, the funding from the Alvin J. Siteman Cancer Research Fund is meant to speed development of a more advanced test that aims to identify these cancers earlier and with better sensitivity. The recipients are: Aadel Chaudhuri, MD, PhD; Christopher Maher; and Russell Pachynski, MD. Read more on the Siteman website.