Hyejung Won (Associate Professor of Genetics) Awarded 2025 Neurobiology of Brain Disorders Award.
The McKnight Endowment Fund for Neuroscience has selected four projects to receive the 2025 Neurobiology of Brain Disorders Awards. The awards will total $1.2 million for research on the biology of brain diseases, with each project receiving $100,000 per year in each of the next three years for a total of $300,000 funded per project.
The Neurobiology of Brain Disorders (NBD) Awards support innovative research by U.S. scientists who are studying neurological and psychiatric diseases. The awards encourage collaboration between basic and clinical neuroscience to translate laboratory discoveries about the brain and nervous system into diagnoses and therapies to improve human health.
An additional area of interest is the contribution of the environment to brain disorders. Early-life environmental stress is a powerful disposing factor for later neurological and psychiatric disorders. Studies show communities of color are at higher risk for these stressors, which range from environmental (e.g. climate, nutrition, exposure to chemicals, pollution) to social (e.g. family, education, housing, poverty). From a clinical perspective, understanding how environmental factors contribute to brain disease is essential for developing effective therapies.
“From decoding the complex mechanisms that underlie neurodegeneration to charting the circuitry of pain and uncovering how paternal exposures shape brain health, the researchers selected for this year’s award are pushing the frontiers of neuroscience in bold and necessary directions,” said Michael Ehlers, M.D., Ph.D., Chair of the Awards Committee and Entrepreneur Partner at MPM BioImpact. “This year’s projects include investigations into the higher-order interactome in C9orf72-mediated ALS, myelin dysfunction in Alzheimer’s disease, the spinal output map of pain states, and, for the first time since announcing our emphasis two years ago, an environmentally focused project examining how paternal stress impacts offspring neurobiology. These efforts promise to reshape our understanding of brain disease and point to transformative therapeutic possibilities for the future.”
Multiple awards are given each year. This year’s four awards include:
Hyejung Won, Ph.D., Associate Professor, Genetics, University of North Carolina School of Medicine, and co-principal investigator David Shechner, Ph.D., Assistant Professor, Pharmacology, University of Washington, Seattle, Washington
Deciphering the higher-order interactome in C9orf72-mediated ALS
With 182 letters of intent received this year, the awards are highly competitive. A committee of distinguished scientists reviews the letters and invites a select few researchers to submit full proposals. In addition to Dr. Ehlers, the committee includes Nicole Calakos, M.D., Ph.D., Duke University; Gloria Choi, Ph.D., Massachusetts Institute of Technology; André Fenton, Ph.D., New York University; Joseph G. Gleeson, M.D., University of California San Diego; Tom Lloyd, M.D., Ph.D., Baylor College of Medicine; and Michael Shadlen, M.D., Ph.D., Columbia University.
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