Taking Flight Award
Yevgeny Berdichevsky, PhD / Lehigh University
This project relies on high-throughput bioengineering methods to identify the precise roles that these signaling molecules play in the development of epilepsy.
Taking Flight Award
John Wolf, PhD / University of Pennsylvania
We are therefore evaluating circuitry changes over time after injury in the hippocampus, a vulnerable brain area in both epilepsy and trauma. We hope to understand how these alterations lead to epileptic activity after injury.
SUDEP
Else Tolner, PhD / Leiden University Medical Center (LUMC), the Netherlands
By experimentally modulating the misbalance between excitatory and inhibitory neuronal activity, e.g. using drugs that affect adenosinergic inhibition, we expect to aggravate or ameliorate the SUDEP phenotype in our mice.
SUDEP, Funded by the Christopher Donalty and Kyle Coggins Memorial Award
Gordon Buchanan, MD, PhD / Yale University
We will employ a genetic mouse model of serotonin depletion to evaluate the effects of seizures which occur during different sleep-wake states and circadian times on breathing, heart control, and mortality.
Team S4 Award
David Paterson, PhD / Boston Children’s Hospital
This study has the potential, therefore, to uncover novel information that could be used to diagnose and treat all individuals at risk from sudden unexpected death associated with seizure.
Challenge Award
Janice Naegele, PhD / Wesleyan University
Following transplantation of stem cell-derived GABAergic interneurons into the dentate gyrus, we will use optogenetics to study whether the transplanted cells suppress spontaneous seizures and prevent axonal sprouting by making strong inhibitory synapses onto newborn hyperexcitable granule neurons.
Challenge Award, Funded by the Julie's Hope Award
John Huguenard, PhD / Stanford University
In this proposal, we will develop novel optogenetic tools to determine causal links between the activity of specific cell types and various seizure types in behaving rodents.
Innovator Award
Thomas McCown, PhD / University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill
With an established astrocyte selective virus vector, the potential exists to reverse the pro-seizure environment and subsequently prevent seizure activity.
Innovator Award, Funded by the Rock the Block for Pediatric Epilepsy Research Award
J. Marie Hardwick, PhD / Johns Hopkins University
Using yeast genetics as a tool to find new regulators of cell death, we identified an uncharacterized yeast gene with homology to a human gene mutated in children with a form of intractable epilepsy.
