Contacts: 
Brenda Maceo (323) 442-2830
email: maceo@hsc.usc.edu

Eric Mankin (213) 740-9344
Email: mankin@usc.edu

 

 

Keck School Neurogenetic Initiative Will

Seek Cures for Neurological Diseases

 

Building upon deep scientific resources, the Neurogenetic Initiative at the newly renamed Keck School of Medicine of the University of Southern California will bring together laboratory and clinical neuroscientists to understand and cure neurological disorders.

The initiative will be funded by a portion of the $110 million grant from the W.M. Keck Foundation to USC announced July 29, 1999.

The Initiative will enlist 50 faculty scientists in 17 USC departments, hospitals and centers and recruit at least 30 more, according to its director, Brian E. Henderson, M.D., professor of preventive medicine and holder of the Kenneth T. Norris Jr. Chair of Epidemiology at the Keck School.

"The challenge that currently lies before scientists," said Henderson, former director of the USC/Kenneth Norris Jr. Comprehensive Cancer Center and former president of the Salk Institute for Biological Studies, "is to unravel the variables leading to neurological disorders and to obtain data on the malfunction of the expressed genes that cause disease.

"Using an interdisciplinary approach including molecular epidemiology, neurobiology and genetics, USC scientists will be able to understand how each variable contributes to disease progression and can help in delineating and identifying diagnostic and potential therapeutic alternatives."

Henderson said the initiative has five principal research goals:

1. To sequence and characterize the genes that are critical to the normal development and functioning of the central nervous system.

2. To characterize genotypic variations and determine their function as they relate to the development of neurological disorders affecting sensory, motor or cognitive functions.

3. To identify the genetic mechanisms in the molecular pathogenesis of neuropsychiatric or neurological disorders and devise diagnostic or therapeutic interventions, including targeted drug and gene therapies.

4. To link underlying genetic susceptibilities with environmental and psychological risk factors that in combination lead to many chronic neurological diseases, including manic depression and Alzheimer's disease.

5. To foster the acquisition of new knowledge that applies to the maintenance of human health or the prevention diseases.

These goals will be attacked in five discipline-based programs, all led by recognized leaders in their respective fields, who currently have $30 million in federally-funded research, including four National Institutes of Health Program Project Grants.

The Program in Receptor Biology will focus on how the brain receives and distributes information.

Leaders: Cheryl M. Craft, Ph.D., Mary D. Allen Chair in Vision Research professor and chair of cell and neurobiology; and Jean Chen Shih, Ph.D., Boyd and Elsie Welin Professor, Department of Molecular Pharmacology and Toxicology, USC School of Pharmacy, and professor of cell and neurobiology, Keck School of Medicine

The Program in Gene Regulation will study gene expression in neurons, including whether differentiated neurons can be induced to replicate.

Leaders: Peter Jones, Ph.D., director, USC/Norris Comprehensive Cancer Center, and H. Leslie Hoffman and Elaine S. Hoffman Chair in Cancer Research; and Michael Lieber, M.D., Ph.D., Rita & Edward Polusky Professor of Basic Cancer Research

The Program in Cellular and Systems Neurobiology will define the mechanisms that help a single cell proceed through a developmental process of organizational complexity.

Leaders: Laurence Kedes, M.D., professor and William M. Keck Chair in Biochemistry, director, Institute for Genetic Medicine; and Thomas McNeill, Ph.D., director, Gerontology Research Institute at the Leonard Davis School of Gerontology, and associate professor of gerontology and biological sciences

The Program in Molecular Epidemiology will elucidate the etiology and pathogenesis of neuropathological states, and the relationship between genetic susceptibility and environmental response in defining sound health and disease.

Leaders: Susan Preston-Martin, Ph.D., professor of preventive medicine; Brian Henderson, M.D., and Duncan Thomas, Ph.D., director, biostatistics division, Department of Preventive Medicine

The Program in Developmental Therapeutics will translate basic research breakthroughs into enhanced treatments for neurological disorders.

Leaders: Leslie Weiner, M.D., professor and Richard Angus Grant, Sr. Chair of Neurology; W. French Anderson, M.D., director, USC Gene Therapy Laboratories; and A. Linn Murphree, M.D., professor of pediatrics and ophthalmology

The initiative research will probe four broad disease-based areas -sensory systems, degenerative and demyelinating diseases, neuro-oncology, and addictive and neuropsychiatric disorders.

According to Dr. Henderson, The Neurogenetic Initiative on the Health Sciences Campus (HSC) will complement research on the USC University Park Campus (UPC), and emphasize collaboration between the two campuses.

Henderson noted that program co-leader Cheryl Craft has reinforced intercampus ties originally fostered by another program co-leader, Leslie Weiner, by formalizing activities among HSC molecular- and disease-related neuroscientists and the USC Hedco interdepartmental Neuroscience Neural, Informational & Behavioral Sciences program directed by Richard Thompson, Ph.D., the William M. Keck Chair in Biological Sciences.

Other programs from UPC that will be part of the Initiative include the Biogerontology Program of the Andrus Gerontology Center; the Computational Biology Program of the USC College of Letters, Arts and Sciences, and the School of Engineering's Center for Neural Engineering.

On the HSC, scientists involved in the Initiative will come from the Departments of Cell & Neurobiology, Neurology, Neurosurgery, Ophthalmology, Psychiatry & Behavioral Sciences and Preventive Medicine. Also involved will be faculty from the Gene Therapy Laboratories, the Institute for Health Promotion and Disease Prevention Research and the Institute for Genetic Medicine.

Other USC affiliated institutions and entities involved include the USC/Norris Comprehensive Cancer Center, the Doheny Eye Institute, USC University Hospital, Childrens Hospital Los Angeles and Rancho Los Amigos National Rehabilitation Center.

To broaden educational and training opportunities to faculty, students and staff, the Institute for Genetic Medicine and the Department of Cell and Neurobiology both sponsor regularly-scheduled neuroscience lectures from outstanding USC faculty and visiting faculty from other academic institutions on neurogenetic-related topics.

Henderson pointed out that the HSC focus on neurogenetics will offer a range of opportunities for joint collaboration for investigators studying neuronal diseases and basic neurobiology, especially with the numerous ethnically and socio-economically diverse patient databases scientists have compiled.

"Harnessing its broad resources-from molecular epidemiology to neurobiology and behavior to genetics-USC will be able to advance the understanding of the complexities of the nervous system. " Henderson said. "With USC's internationally-recognized program in molecular epidemiology and growing expertise in molecular genetics, the university is uniquely positioned to pursue the mutagenic origin of neurologic and neuropsychiatric disease."

That pursuit - and the Initiative from which it springs - will have as its home base the Neurogenetic Institute, a new $40 million, 125,000-square-foot research facility to be built on the USC Health Sciences Campus in East Los Angeles. Many of the more than 30 new faculty members who will be recruited for the Initiative - and their associated graduate students, post-doctoral researches and technicians - will work at this facility.

"We will draw on all our resources, on both our campuses, and use our considerable expertise in the management of multidisciplinary research to make a difference in the diagnosis and treatment of neurodegenerative diseases. The effort will be focused in the new Neurogenetic Institute at the Keck School of Medicine of USC. The Keck gift makes the effort possible."