GRANTS FUNDED in 2005

Discovering the Molecular and Cellular Causes in the Pathogenesis of HD:

Research Grants:

• Ilya Bezprozvanny, University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center, Dallas, for Dysregulation of Calcium signaling in the pathogenesis of HD.

• Alexander Osmand, University of Tennessee, Knoxville, for Histological detection of polyglutamine aggregation in HD and HD model brains.

• Isabel Perez-Otano, Center for Research in Applied Medicine, Pamplona, Spain, for Disrupted NMDA receptor trafficking in the pathogenesis of HD.

Postdoctoral Fellowships:

• Pascal Leuraud (Mentor: Emmanuel Brouillet), Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, Paris, France

• Dobrila Rudnicki (Mentor: Russell Margolis), Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, for Determining the mechanism of pathogenesis in Huntington's disease-like 2.

Research Contract:

• Leslie Thompson & J. Lawrence Marsh, University of California at Irvine, for Secondary modification of huntingtin protein in the pathogenesis of HD., for Automated microscopy to identify toxic forms of polyglutamine aggregates. (LIEBERMAN AWARD)

Identifying Targets for HD Therapeutic Development:

Research Grants:

• Steven Finkbeiner, J. David Gladstone Institute at University of California at San Francisco (Lieberman Award)

Postdoctoral Fellowships:

• Kanae Ijima-Ando (mentor: Tim Tully), Cold Spring Harbor Lab, Cold Spring Harbor, New York, for Modifiers of polyglutamine-induced transcriptional dysregulation in Drosophila.

• Sanjay Magavi (mentor: Carlos Lois), Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA, for Induction of neurogenesis in the mouse as a model restorative treatment for HD.

• Vibha Taneja (mentor: Susan Liebman), University of Illinois, Chicago, for Screening for genes that modulate the toxicity of polyglutamine aggregates.

• Sheng Zhang (mentor: Norbert Perrimon), Harvard Medical School, Boston, for Genome wide siRNA in Drosophila cells to identify targets for HD therapies.

Research Contract:

• Christian Néri, Institut National de la Santé et de la Médicale (INSERM), Paris, France, for Genome wide siRNA in C. elegans to identify targets for HD therapies.

Testing Potential HD Therapeutics in Mouse Models of HD:

Research Contracts:

• Gillian Bates, Guys Hospital at King's College, London UK, for Testing histone deacetylase and aggregation inhibitors in HD (R6/2) mice.

• M. Flint Beal, Cornell University School of Medicine, New York, for Testing FDA-approved and near-approved in HD (R6/2 and N171Q82) mice.

• Beverly Davidson, University of Iowa, Iowa City, for Testing viral-encoded anti-huntingtin intrabodies as a potential HD therapy.

• Jeffery Johnson, University of Wisconsin, Madison, for Testing up regulation of nrf-2 as a potential HD therapy.

• X. William Yang, University of California at Los Angeles, for Developing HD BAC mice as a new platform for testing putative HD therapies.

Diagnostics for HD Pathogenesis and Progression:

Research Contracts:

• John Mazziotta, University of California at Los Angeles, for Testing FDDNP as a diagnostic for pathogenesis in HD and HD mouse brains.

• Edward McCabe, University of California at Los Angles, for Storage and distribution of immortalized cells from Venezuelan HD kindreds.

• Jean Paul Vonsattel, Columbia University Medical Center, New York, for New York Brain Bank, a center for the acquisition and distribution of HD brains.