Today the American Epilepsy Society (AES) announced Anis Contractor, Ph.D., Associate Professor of Physiology at Northwestern University, Feinberg School of Medicine, as the recipient of a 2015 AES Seed Grant. Dr. Contractor's proposed research seeks to address a fundamental question about cellular and circuit level excitability in the mouse model of Dravet Syndrome.
Dr. Contractor's ongoing research is aimed at determining the roles of receptor dependent modulatory processes in determining synaptic and cellular excitability. A large component of his lab's research has centered upon the role of kainate receptors in the hippocampus, their contribution to excitability in the CA3 microcircuit, and their ultimate influence on developmental processes.
Dr. Contractor's winning proposal uses single cell patch-clamp recording and two photon imaging to determine how excitability is altered in the CA3 region of the hippocampus in the Dravet Syndrome mouse model. Dr. Contractor will collaborate with the laboratories of Alfred George, M.D., and Jennifer Kearney, Ph.D., in the Department of Pharmacology at Northwestern University. This award will be a first step in establishing preliminary data to support future funding for this collaboration, as there is no other support for these studies. The collaboration between these laboratories will address the critical pieces missing in our current understanding of how mutations in sodium channels in Dravet Syndrome affect excitability and synaptic development in the hippocampus.
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