Quest Award, Funded by the Griffin Leadbetter Award
Delia Talos, MD / Children’s Hospital, Boston/ Harvard Medical School
Dr. Talos’ research will examine the altered nerve cell response in TSC, and determine if this alteration plays a crucial role in seizure development and the brain’s ability to respond to medication.
Multidisciplinary Awards
Avtar Roopra, PhD / University of Wisconsin, Madison
Many individuals with epilepsy benefit from the use of the ketogenic diet, leading Drs. Roopra, Rutecki, and Burger to hypothesize that medications that control the body’s energy usage might also control epilepsy.
Multidisciplinary Awards
Melanie Tallent, PhD / Drexel University School of Medicine
Drs. Lutz and Tallent will focus on rescuing abnormal alternative splicing in the brain as an approach to reduce seizures and prevent epilepsy.
Innovator Awards
Manisha Patel, PhD / University of Colorado, Denver
The goal of this project is to conduct a proof-of-principle study to determine if early treatment with a novel catalytic antioxidant prevents metabolic dysfunction and epilepsy in mice lacking a critical mitochondrial antioxidant.
Funded by the Christopher Donalty and Kyle Coggins Memorial Award
Carl Faingold, PhD / Southern Illinois University School of Medicine
The current study will examine if new drugs that have a more selective effect on serotonin will prevent the respiratory arrest that follows seizures in these mice.
Dravet Syndrome Foundation & CURE Award
Sebastian Maier, MD, PhD / University Hospital of Wuerzburg
Drs. Maier and Mantegazza will study the role of this sodium channel subtype in the heart in a model of Dravet syndrome in order to investigate the occurrence and mechanism of arrhythmias and their possible involvement in SUDEP.
The Leisher Family Award
Torbjorn Tomson, MD, PhD / Karolinska Institutet /Uppsala University
Drs. Tomson and Mattson will utilize three nation-wide Swedish registries that offer unique opportunities to study the association between drug treatment and risk of sudden unexplained death in epilepsy (SUDEP).
Innovator Awards
Alexander Rotenberg, MD, PhD / Children’s Hospital Boston, Harvard Medical School
This team proposes to test a novel application of ceftriaxone, acutely after brain injury when the biochemical changes leading to post-traumatic epilepsy are first emerging.
Innovator Awards
Lionel Carmant, MD / University of Montreal
By injecting RE patients’ blood cells into severely immunologically-compromised mice, the team is able to induce seizures and produce pathological findings in the mouse brain similar to pathological lesions observed in children with RE.
