Johns Hopkins' Brain Science Institute has just
announced its second cycle of research grants,
awards totaling $6.4 million over a two-year period. The 16
grants extend to research teams
throughout the university's schools and campuses, advancing
the BSI goal to solve fundamental
questions of brain development and function and translate
those findings into therapy.
In this cycle, 89 investigative teams forwarded
possible research topics for three of the
institute's target areas: new approaches to perception and
cognition, regeneration and repair in the
nervous system, and schizophrenia.
The proposals reflect the BSI's aim to spark broader
collaborations and unusual creativity in
neuroscience research across Johns Hopkins. Three-quarters
of the faculty who applied are in the
School of Medicine — from 11 departments, the
Institute for Basic Biomedical Sciences and the
Institute for Cellular Engineering — and the
remaining from APL; the schools of Engineering, Public
Health, Education, and Arts and Sciences; the Zanvyl
Krieger Mind/Brain Institute; and the Kennedy
Krieger Institute.
Successful grantees were chosen by the BSI's executive
committee along with a largely
external committee of experts.
More than scientific merit figured into a grant award:
A project had to have high marks for
innovation, bring together new multidisciplinary groups and
show potential for high impact in a given
field. "The quality of proposed research was, on the whole,
outstanding," said John Griffin, BSI
director, "and we regret not being able to fund all
projects with merit."
Among the successful grantees in the perception and
cognition area are investigators whose
proposals involve novel neuroimaging. Other projects
include a broad-based effort in systems
physiology — led by the Mind/Brain Institute's
Edward Connor — to identify common themes in handling
visual, auditory and somatosensory information. Hongjun
Song and his colleagues at the Institute for
Cell Engineering sparked reviewers' enthusiasm: Song's
team hopes to differentiate human-induced
pluripotent stem cells from skin into desired neuronal
types for research.
Psychiatry's Akira Sawa will
assess altered oxidative lymphocyte metabolism in
schizophrenia patients. And Jef Boeke has
developed a retrotransposon-based tiling chip to hunt for
genetic changes in that disease.
For a complete list of grantees, go to the BSI Web
site at
www.hopkinsmedicine.org/brainscience.