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NIH Awards $5.4 Million to Multi-Institutional Consortium to Investigate Neurological Symptoms in CDG
We are thrilled to share that a consortium of five research institutions, centered at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, has been awarded a prestigious NIH Program Project Grant (P01) from the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke (NINDS) titled โInvestigation of Neural Pathogenic Mechanisms Associated with Congenital Disorders of Glycosylation.โ This five-year, $5.4 million initiative will focus on investigating how the glycosylation defects in different CDGs impacts the cells in the brain and central nervous systemโ a question of critical importance as nearly all CDG patients have some neurological symptoms but we still donโt fully understand the reasons why these symptoms develop. This gap in our understanding is delaying the identification and testing of new therapies.
This new NIH-funded program aims to fill that gap by taking advantage of the experimental strengths of three different model systems โ zebrafish, fruit flies and brain organoids or โmini-brainsโ that can be grown in the lab. The Program consists of three highly integrated Research Projects that will use these different model systems to make discoveries that will then be shared with the other groups. This sharing of information will greatly accelerate the research. This cross-talk and integration is a key aspect of the P01 Program Project grant.
The effort is led by two Principal Investigators, Dr. Eva Morava-Kozicz at Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai and Dr. Richard Steet at the Greenwood Genetic Center (GGC), who bring combined strength in clinical and basic science aspects of CDG. The Multi-omics Core of the Program, led by Dr. Akhilesh Pandey at the Mayo Clinic, will bring state-of-the-art technologies like glycomics, glycoproteomics, and metabolomics to the team, supporting each Research Project.
The three integrated Research Projects capitalize of the strengths of different model systems and the unique research expertise of the investigators:
โข Research Project 1, led by Dr. Heather Flanagan-Steet at GGC, will use zebrafish models of PMM2-CDG and PIGA-CDG to examine how glycosylation defects affect different cell types during brain development.
โข Research Project 2, led by Dr. Clement Chow at the University of Utah School of Medicine, will utilize Drosophila (fruit flies) models to explore different mutations and cell types drive neurological disease in CDG. His work also aims to uncover how genetic background may alter disease progression.
โข Research Project 3, co-led by Dr. Tamas Kozicz at Mount Sinai and Dr. Steven Sloan at Emory University, will apply human brain organoid models of PMM2-CDG and ALG13-CDG to investigate how altered glycosylation and metabolism disrupt the circuits that transmit signals in the brain.
This collaborative and exciting research program brings together a powerhouse team of seven investigators from five leading institutions, combining basic science, clinical expertise, and a broad collection of model systems to accelerate our understanding of why the brain and central nervous system are so affected in CDG. The investigators envision that discoveries made in the initial CDGs that will be studied here will inform our understanding of multiple related CDGs and may open up opportunities to explore common modes of treatment.