High Impact/High Risk grant winners named
Pieper studies aspects of neuronal cell growth; Kavalali continues work on synapses
By Amanda Siegfried
Two faculty members exploring the frontiers of neuroscience have received funding for projects through UT Southwestern’s High Impact/High Risk Research Program.
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| Dr. Andrew Pieper |
The projects are led by Dr. Andrew Pieper, assistant professor of psychiatry, and Dr. Ege Kavalali, associate professor of neuroscience and physiology and a Cain Foundation Scholar in Medical Research.
The emphasis of the UT Southwestern Medical School program is on research that has the potential to greatly influence the science or practice of medicine even though there is a substantial risk of failure. Grant recipients are funded for a year to test a hypothesis and determine whether the idea has promise.
With the addition of the new recipients, 30 faculty members have received grants through the program since it was established in 2001.
Dr. Pieper is investigating whether enhancing new neuronal cell growth, or neurogenesis, in a region of the brain called the hippocampus can help prevent or make more bearable cognitive deficits associated with aging. Together with Dr. Steven McKnight, chairman of biochemistry, he has developed an innovative screening project in living mice to identify novel small, druglike molecules that one day could, in humans, augment neurogenesis in the adult brain. With a few promising candidate molecules already in hand, the next step for him and his colleagues is to test his ideas in animal models of neuropsychiatric disease.
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| Dr. Ege Kavalali |
“If our hypothesis is correct, then our work would provide a basis for the development of new pharmacological agents for treating cognitive decline with aging,” Dr. Pieper said. “If it proves incorrect, and deficits in learning and memory are not ameliorated by augmenting hippocampal neurogenesis, this also would be an important finding for the field of aging research.”
Dr. Kavalali will use his grant to investigate the use of light signals to switch on and off connections between nerve cells, called synapses. In his research, he uses a light-sensitive protein derived from a single-celled microorganism called Halobacterium salinarum. The release of neurotransmitter substances from nerve cells, such as brain cells, that have been altered genetically to express this protein can be either triggered or suppressed with pulses of light. Dr. Kavalali’s project will investigate whether stimulating such cells with different patterns of light signals can affect the communication between cells, as well as the behavior of a model organism in which the cells reside – in this case, a fruit fly.
“Our aim is to develop this technology to manipulate synaptic transmission rapidly and reversibly,” Dr. Kavalali said.