Clinical Research:
Irena Dujmovic Basuroski, MD led the UNC MS center to Comprehensive Care recognition. Monica M. Diaz, MD received an Alzheimer’s Association research grant to study frailty and dementia among elderly in Eastern Uganda. Gwenn A. Garden, MD, PhD contributed to understanding microglia in AD (Prater et al., Nature Aging). James F. Howard Jr, MD and Manisha Chopra, MBBS led a groundbreaking rCART trial (Granit et al., Lancet Neurology) and their 5th FDA approved drug for treating myasthenia gravis (Howard et al., Lancet Neurology; press release). Senyene E. Hunter, MD, PhD, received an NINDS Child Neurologist K12 award. David Y. Hwang, MD received the Neurocritical Care Foundation INCLINE award and a joint Duke-UNC NIH U24 Center grant to advance acute stroke research. Rick B. Meeker, PhD and Monica M. Diaz, MD received an NIA-funded award for an HIV neuroprotection trial. Soma Sengupta, MD, PhD advanced glioblastoma treatment (Ranjan, et al., Cell Reports Medicine), initiated the Imvax trial for glioblastoma, and received the American Brain Tumor Association discovery grant. Miriam Sklerov, MD received an NIH K23 award to study brain stimulation in apathy and received the UNC James Woods Junior Faculty Award.
Basic Research:
Todd J. Cohen, PhD developed a new mouse model of frontotemporal dementia that is more physiologically relevant to human disease (Necarsulmer et al., eLife). Gwenn A. Garden, MD, PhD identified miR-155 as a novel modulator of microglia Aβ internalization and synaptic pruning for AD pathology (Aloi et al., Journal of Neuroinflammation). Sung-Ho Lee, DVM, PhD received an NSF grant to develop MRI-compatible electrodes for deep brain stimulation and recording. Ian Shih, PhD examined the neuromodulatory effects of the anterior insular cortex on the brain default mode network (Menon et al., Nature Communications), revealed neural dynamics between the default mode and salience network switching (Chao et al., Science Advances), contributed to a multi-center rodent fMRI study (Grandjean et al., Nature Neuroscience), received two NIH R01 and three R21 awards, and completed the installation of a new 9.4T MRI system supported by an NIH high-end instrumentation award. Weiting Zhang, MD, PhD received an NINDS R21 award to study functional connectivity in the striatum.