The National Institute of Aging will fund the lab of Jonathan Schisler, PhD, for a five-year, $2.5 million grant to study various aspects of biology related to deterioration of motor skills and cognitive function.
Jonathan Schisler, PhD, assistant professor in the UNC︎ Department of Pharmacology and the UNC Department of Pathology and Lab Medicine, received a five-year, $2.5 million grant from the National Institute of Aging to study how disease-causing mutations in key enzymes involved in protein quality control results in a loss in motor function and accelerated aging.
The ability for cells to regulate and maintain protein quality control during stress is vital to both health and disease. By using pluripotent stem cells in parallel with preclinical models, the Schisler Lab will test novel therapies to counteract the alterations in protein quality control. These studies will pave the way for the development of precision medicine approaches that alleviate the debilitating effects on motor skills and cognitive function caused by age-dependent deterioration.
Together with Rick Page, PhD, the Robert H. and Nancy J. Blayney Associate Professor of Chemistry and Biochemistry at Miami University in Ohio, this study includes approaches that encompass biology at the atomic, cellular, and whole-body level.
Schisler is a member of the UNC McAllister Heart Institute.
~The orignal article is published on UNC School of Medicine News