Traumatic Brain Injury Awards
Richard J. Staba, PhD / University of California
Dr. Staba’s research uses direct brain recordings to characterize very fast electrical events called pathologic high frequency oscillations (pHFOs) that are believed to be responsible for the generation of epilepsy in the brain.
Innovator Award, Funded by the Rock the Block for Pediatric Epilepsy Research Award
Paula Waters, PhD / University of British Columbia/British Columbia Children's Hospital
Paula Waters, together with co-investigators Marion Coulter-Mackie and Sylvia Stockler, is working toward an innovative new treatment for PDE.
Challenge Awards Funded by the People Against Childhood Epilepsy (PACE) & CURE Award
Edward Perez-Reyes, PhD / University of Virginia
The goal of Drs. Perez-Reyes and Kapur’s research is to develop a novel gene therapy tool that will silence hyperactive neurons that cause seizures by selective expression of a potassium leak channel.
Taking Flight Award
Ramon Birnbaum, PhD / Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, Israel
Here, we will identify and characterize gene regulatory elements of human inhibitory interneurons that could be associated with infantile spasms.
Prevention of Acquired Epilepsies Awards
Guy McKhann, MD / Columbia University Medical Center
A multidisciplinary team will study a mouse glioma model that closely parallels the human disease to determine when seizures arise, and we will see if we can prevent or treat seizures by blocking the mTOR pathway with an oral drug that is FDA approved for human use.
CURE Epilepsy Award
Amy Wagner, MD / University of Pittsburgh
Dr. Wagner’s team plans to conduct studies that will have a transformative impact on treatment and prevention of PTE for individuals with both civilian and military TBI.
Taking Flight Award
Esther Krook-Magnuson, PhD / University of California, Irvine
This project uses a mouse model of temporal lobe epilepsy to investigate whether a responsive optogenetic intervention applied only when a seizure occurs and selectively targeting only a subset of excitatory cells in the temporal lobe can control spontaneous temporal lobe seizures.
Taking Flight Award
Ethan Goldberg, MD, PhD / The Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia
They will assess the functional integration of transplanted interneurons into normal and epileptic hippocampus as well as the ability of such cells to correct circuit-level dysfunction seen in epileptic brain circuits.
Innovator Award, Funded by the Vivian L. Cotton Award
Akiko Nishiyama, MD, PhD / University of Connecticut
The goal of this project is to test the potential of local NG2 glial cells as a source of functionally active interneurons in the seizure environment using a mouse model of temporal lobe epilepsy.
