The National Institutes of Health (NIH) on September 30 announced 52 highly competitive awards for high-risk, high-payoff research for young biomedical scientists, and UCSF tops California institutions with four recipients.
The four recipients of the NIH Director’s New Innovator Awards will use their new funds to further understanding of cancer, autism, stem cells and the potential for microbes to yield new drugs. Each individual award covers up to $1.5 million in research costs over five years.
The recipients of the new innovators awards are:
- Lauren Weiss, PhD, assistant professor of psychiatry;
- Diana Laird, PhD, an assistant professor in residence in the UCSF Department of Obstetrics, Gynecology and Reproductive Sciences and Eli and Edythe Broad Center for Regeneration Medicine;
- Michael Fischbach, PhD, an assistant professor in the Department of Bioengineering and Therapeutic Sciences; and
- Ophir Klein MD, PhD, faculty member in the Schools of Dentistry and Medicine and director of the Craniofacial and Mesenchymal Biology (CMB) Program.
Lauren Weiss – Elusive Autism Genes
About 90 percent of autism risk is thought to be due to inherited genetic variants. However the genes responsible are for the most part unidentified. Implicating genes has proved difficult because autism is a complex disease in which multiple genes are likely to contribute to the risk. Although model organisms suggest that interactions between genes are important determinants of complex traits, genetic interactions have been difficult to identify for human disease. To eliminate one of the unknowns, with her new innovator award Lauren Weiss will conduct a genome-wide association study of families that include individuals with an already identified genetic mutation known to cause a rare inherited syndrome --- one in which many of those afflicted also have autism. She will look for additional genetic variants that influence whether an individual with the syndrome has autism.Diana Laird – Competing Cells and a Healthy Germ Line
Competition between cells in the body contributes to the health of tissues, regulates the size of organs, and underlies the growth of tumors. In the case of the germ cells —- egg and sperm — or their precursors, the outcome of a competition not only affects the quality and quantity of germ cells, but also is inherited by the offspring, making it relevant to evolution. With her new innovator award developmental biologist Diana Laird will study the mechanisms of competition between the precursors of egg and sperm in the embryo to shed light on cancer, where similar mechanisms are likely exploited by tumor cells. This competition among cells will need to be considered in stem cell therapy and other treatments that introduce cells into the body, Laird says.Michael Fischbach – Will Microbes Inside Us Yield New Drugs?
Bacteria and fungi that grow inside us or on our skin are the focus of Michael Fischbach, another UCSF new innovator award recipient. He aims to identify potentially therapeutic, drug-like molecules. Fischbach is an expert on the chemistry of small molecules formed during metabolic processes. He also is a bioinformatics expert. Although microbial cells outnumber the cells of their human host by about a factor of 10, these microbes have rarely been investigated in drug screening studies. A recent and ongoing NIH-funded initiative to map the genomes of human-associated microbes and to have information about the microbes deposited in extensive databases will make it easier for Fischbach to apply his expertise to the task of identifying potential drugs.
