Scharfman R01 Grant Renewed for Five More Years
Dr. Helen Scharfman receives a five-year renewal of her R01 grant from the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke. The grant, titled “The Role of Hippocampal area CA2 in Epilepsy,” aims to enhance understanding of the role of the CA2 region of the hippocampus in different forms of epilepsy, further validating CA2 as a novel target for treating seizure disorders. Scharfman lab members previously found that genetic-based manipulations that silence a portion of CA2 (dorsal CA2) reduce the frequency and duration of seizures in a mouse model of temporal lobe epilepsy (TLE). This research aims to improve on the ability to treat seizures by silencing a different region of CA2 (ventral CA2) strongly implicated in seizure activity in humans, and by examining the role of CA2 in a genetic mouse model of TLE.