Research Initiated September 2007
Accelerated Biological Aging as Shared Mechanism in Cardiovascular and Brain Disorders
Viola Vaccarino, M.D., Ph.D., Cardiology, School of Medicine
Investigation of the Environmental and Genetic Basis of Non-Alcoholic Fatty Liver Disease through the Emory NAFLD Research Group: A Multidisciplinary Project Uniting Liver Experts
Diego Martin, M.D., Ph.D. Radiology, School of Medicine
Miriam Vos, M.D., Pediatrics, School of Medicine
Large Scale Genome Resequencing at Emory: Revolutionizing Basic and Clinical Research
Stephen T. Warren, Ph.D. and Michael Zwick, Ph.D., Department of Human Genetics. School of Medicine
Purpose: This initiative provides support to establish "next generation" deep genomic resequencing at Emory. Using novel technologies developed at Emory along with a Solexa resequenicing instrument, generation of 1 billion basepairs of DNA sequence of targeted genomic intervals is possible in a matter of days at a cost of less than 0.0005¢ per base. Thus detecting sequence variation in a 1,000 candidate genes in patients with a particular disorder will be possible.
The Predict ALS (Lou Gehrig's disease) Study.
Michael Benatar MBChB, M.S., DPhil, Neurology, School of Medicine
Purpose: Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), like many other neurodegenerative diseases, is characterized by a pre-symptomatic phase during which neuronal degeneration proceeds prior to the appearance of clinically manifest disease. This observation may explain, at least in part, the failure to identify therapeutic agents in clinical trials involving subjects with relatively advanced symptomatic disease. The goal of this project is improve our understanding of the pre-symptomatic phase of the disease and thereby perhaps to pave the way for a preventive clinical trial or a treatment trial of symptomatic subjects at an earlier stage of the disease. This study will involve the prospective and serial evaluation (using multiple investigative modalities) of a population of healthy individuals at risk for developing ALS based on the presence of a mutation in the superoxide dismutase (SOD1) gene.
Establishment of a Non-Human Primate Stroke Imaging Research Program
Timothy Duong, Ph.D., Neurology and Yerkes Primate Research Center,
Jacques Dion, M.D., Radiology, School of Medicine
Stuart Zola, Ph.D., Yerkes Primate Research Center
Purpose: Stroke is the third leading cause of death and the leading cause of long-term disability in the world. In the United States alone, 4.5 million people have permanent neurological deficits associated with stroke, 71% of stroke survivors can't return to work, and $57.9+ billion per year will be expended on stroke care. The cost is steadily rising because the conditions that put people at risk for stroke (such as heart disease and obesity) are also currently on the rise. At the heart of the issue to be addressed here is the fact that while numerous neuroprotective drugs have shown positive results on experimental rodent models of stroke, none has proven to be effective clinically, even after nearly three decades of research. One widely accepted view to account for this disappointing outcome is that the rodent stroke model simply does not adequately reflect the complexity and the dynamics of human stroke. Recent failures of several high profile neuroprotective drugs in Phase III clinical trials further underscore the importance of developing adequate animal models for stroke research. The Stroke Therapy Academic Industry Roundtable (STAIR), a national committee commissioned by the American Heart Association and the NIH, has recommended that clinically relevant non-human primate stroke models be established for developing and assessing neuroprotective drugs. With these facts in mind, we propose to leverage existing expertise and strengths at the Yerkes Center, Woodruff Health Sciences, Emory University, to establish a multi- and inter-disciplinary stroke research program based around clinically relevant non-human primate stroke models paired with innovative high-resolution brain imaging technology.
