Chan Zuckerberg Initiative selects U of M Medical School assistant professor for collaborative grant award
MINNEAPOLIS/ST. PAUL (2/21/2024) — Madhu Kannan, PhD, an assistant professor at the University of Minnesota Medical School, has been chosen for the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative’s (CZI) Collaborative Pairs Pilot Project Awards. These awards support pairs of investigators and their teams to explore innovative, interdisciplinary approaches to address critical challenges in the fields of neurodegenerative disease and fundamental neuroscience.
Dr. Kannan’s lab will collaborate with the lab of Dr. Adriano Aguzzi, professor and director of the Center for Neuropathology at the University of Zurich. Together, they will focus on understanding the mechanisms of human prion diseases — a group of rare and fatal neurodegenerative diseases notorious for causing epidemics in animals and humans.
“Science thrives on collaborations and it is essential to collaborate with investigators with diverse academic backgrounds, expertise and perspectives. Collaborations enable us to adopt intersectional and cross-disciplinary approaches to tackle seemingly unsolvable problems. They push us beyond our comfort zones. We are better poised to take risks, knowing that there are reinforcements of experts trained in complementary areas to navigate uncharted territories,” said Dr. Kannan, who is also a member of the Medical Discovery Team on Optical Imaging and Brain Science.
Due to the low incidence rate of human prion diseases — like Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease — they are often overlooked in research and medicine. Currently, treatment options are sparse and rely on controlling the spread of infection because of an incomplete understanding of the disease mechanisms.
Drs. Kannan and Aguzzi will focus their research on understanding how human prion diseases affect the normal physiological processes in the brain to ultimately advance knowledge on diagnostic and treatment measures. The project will utilize two complementary, cutting-edge approaches to uncover the relationship between genes and abnormal prion protein function. The unique expertise of the Aguzzi lab in creating genome-wide arrayed CRISPR libraries will combine with the strengths of the Kannan lab in performing high-speed neural activity imaging using fluorescent voltage indicators.
The team will receive $200,000 over 18 months from CZI for the initial phase of this project. If successful, the pair will compete for the Phase 2 acceleration grant, which is a $1.6 million award over four years.
The pair is expected to begin work on the project this spring.
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