IMHRO Rising Star Awardee, 2010
Dr. Herman Wolosker
Herman Wolosker, M.D., Ph.D. of Technion-Israel Institute of Technology, Israel, is a Rising Star Award winner for 2010! Dr. Wolosker is an associate professor of biochemistry with extensive expertise in molecular neuroscience, cell biology and animal studies as well. He has already found evidence that a brain chemical called d-serine may be a naturally-occurring neurotransmitter—and that its improper metabolism may contribute to schizophrenia symptoms. Dr. Wolosker plans to use his Rising Star grant to develop this knowledge to learn to balance this neurotransmitter in the brain, and address treatment of schizophrenia symptoms in a new way.
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IMHRO Rising Star Awardee, 2010
Dr. Joshua Gordon
Joshua Gordon, M.D., Ph.D. of Columbia University is a Rising Star Award winner for 2010! Dr. Gordon has extensive experience in studying functional connectivity in the hippocampal-prefrontal cortex pathway in living mice. Many experiments to date have revealed the potential importance of this pathway in the development of schizophrenia and anxiety disorders. With his Rising Star award, Dr. Gordon aims to take our understanding of the mechanical basis for this pathway’s involvement a few steps deeper—and discover how to use it to generate new therapies. In his own words:
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Staglin Music Festival/NARSAD Rising Star Awardee, 2009
Dr. Hongjun Song
Since receiving his Rising Star grant in 2009, Dr. Hongjun Song of Johns Hopkins University has helped make a major advance toward a complete model of how schizophrenia might work. The theoretical architecture scientists are starting to build of how schizophrenia and other mental disorders might develop from disruptions in what looks like a cornerstone gene, DISC1, and the genes that interact with it has added a whole new structure of understanding thanks to Dr. Song and his colleagues. And at that structure’s acme is new knowledge of an invaluable potential therapy: a molecule found to rescue the neuronal deficiencies initiated by DISC1 disruption in the adult brain.
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Dr. Francis Lee
Staglin Music Festival/NARSAD Rising Star Awardee, 2009
Over the years IMHRO-funded scientists have done amazing research with mice aimed to learn about human diseases. A question that may have occurred to you is “Can results from such mouse studies really translate to useful knowledge regarding humans?” Although the species are similar in many ways, there are obvious differences. This year Dr. Francis Lee of Weill Cornell Medical College, an IMHRO “Rising Star” award winner from 2009, has published research with colleagues that answers this question in the affirmative.
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Staglin Music Festival/NARSAD Rising Star Awardee, 2009
Dr. Andrew Pieper
Since continuing work with his Rising Star grant in 2009, Dr. Andrew Pieper of the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center (UTSWMC) in Dallas has made substantial advances, together with Dr. Steven McKnight also at UTSWMC, towards providing a basis for the development of new treatments for the cognitive problems experienced by patients with schizophrenia. Although additional research and testing must be conducted before human trials can be initiated, this compound (called ‘P7C3’) safely and effectively preserves new neurons as they are born and proliferate in the mouse brain. Moreover, P7C3 "potently blocks the accelerated hippocampal neuronal cell death and cognitive decline that is normally seen in aged rats, thus preserving the ability to learn during aging," Dr. Pieper explains.
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Staglin Music Festival/NARSAD Rising Star Awardee, 2008
Dr. Schahram Akbarian
Scientists have long generally recognized that schizophrenia develops due to a complex interplay between disruptions in someone's genes and stressors in their environment. Changes in the way these genes express themselves as someone grows might play a major role in the development of the disease. If scientists can better understand how this epigenetic process of genes turning on and off works, and specifically how it goes awry in the development of schizophrenia, they may be able to find new molecular targets for potential schizophrenia drug therapies. Charting these changes is a new field of study, and Dr. Schahram Akbarian's lab at University of Massachusetts Medical School has blazed a new path in 2009-10.
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Staglin Family Professor of Psychology and Psychiatry, UCLA
Dr. Tyrone Cannon
If teens who are at risk for developing psychosis can be identified and treated before the onset of a full-blown illness, they have a chance to bypass years of disability. Understanding how genetic defects can lead to the symptoms of psychotic disorders may someday allow doctors to give at-risk teens an even better chance at ongoing health than they have today. At two IMHRO-funded UCLA facilities, the Center for the Assessment and Prevention of Prodromal States (“CAPPS”), and the Center for Cognitive Neuroscience ("the CCN"), Tyrone Cannon Ph.D. is leading teams of scientists to develop psychosis early detection, intervention, and prevention as a regular clinical technique. Working with the North American Prodrome Longitudinal Study (NAPLS), a consortium of 8 clinical research centers across the U.S. and Canada, CAPPS and the CCN have made significant strides toward being able to predict whether a clinically high-risk teen will convert to psychosis within a 15-month time span, and to better treat the illness early on. It actually looks as though, with continued funding, NAPLS, CAPPS and the CCN will in a few years be able to consistently find, and proactively treat, people biologically fated for psychosis before their first episode–and offer them a much healthier outcome.
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Staglin Family / IMHRO Assistant Professor of Psychiatry, UCSF
Dr. Lauren Weiss
"Autism is one of the most highly heritable and complex disorders known, but a genetic cause or risk factor can be identified in only about 10% of autism cases," says Lauren Weiss, Ph.D., IMHRO-sponsored Assistant Professor of Psychiatry at UCSF. "However, this year, genome-wide association studies have begun to identify common genetic variants associated with autism." Dr. Weiss is a dynamo in autism research at the genetic and molecular level. In the last year she has made some groundbreaking discoveries and built solid foundations for future research.
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