Fourteen San Diego researchers will each receive a $500,000 grant under a new “hero” award from the Prebys Foundation, the local charity created by philanthropist Conrad Prebys.
Spread across multiple institutions, the $7 million allocation provides two years of support to those conducting groundbreaking medical research. The initiative “seeks to close the critical gap between women and underrepresented groups in leading research positions by providing substantial funding to researchers for projects that might otherwise not be supported,” according to a statement regarding the program.
The foundation made its choices after consulting with the Science Philanthropy Alliance and consulting firm Open Impact to create the heroes program and select the first group of honorees.
The Prebys Research Heroes and their lines of investigation are:
Rachel Blaser, of UC San Diego, will explore “how healthy aging adults perform tasks that test their spatial awareness and problem-solving abilities,” work that could lead to “methods of detecting early onset of cognitive decline, which could transform our approach.” diseases such as Alzheimer’s disease.
Dannielle Engle of the Salk Institute and her team are “working to find a way to easily and quickly diagnose pancreatic cancer, using a test similar to the PSA test for prostate cancer or colon cancer.”
Stephanie Fraley, of the UC San Diego School of Medicine, “addresses two major challenges facing human health today: advancing infectious disease detection technologies and identifying therapeutic targets for cancer metastases, two conditions that account for a significant proportion of deaths worldwide.”
Mia Huang, of Scripps Research, “aims to impact pregnancy health risks like preeclampsia – a common but poorly understood pregnancy disorder – and look for markers that could predict complications well before they occur.” occur. »
Xin Jin of Scripps Research is “working on approaches to understanding the cellular foundations and fundamentals of brain development, which will allow us to understand how diseases like autism spectrum disorders and schizophrenia, among others, progress” .
Razel Bacuetes Milo, University of San Diego, “is a family nurse practitioner and behavioral scientist who studies the relationship between perceived well-being and stress in the Filipino community to better understand how to improve outcomes in health matters.
Marygorret Obonyo, of the UC San Diego School of Medicine, is “investigating new ways to identify genes that increase the risk of gastric cancer and treatments that might be effective before the cancer reaches terminal stages” .
Angelica Riestra of San Diego State University “aims to find new ways to help counteract the disproportionate impact of trichomoniasis.” Riestra also participates in efforts to promote student success and retention in STEM fields and biomedical research.
Erica Ollmann Saphire, president of the La Jolla Institute of Immunology, “studies the molecular relationships between pathogens and their hosts, discovering where viruses interact with the immune system and where they are vulnerable to neutralization.”
Sonia Sharma, of the La Jolla Institute of Immunology, “is particularly interested in how molecules in the blood can activate the brain’s immune system to develop treatments for Alzheimer’s disease.”
Tatyana Sharpee, of the Salk Institute, “is working on potentially groundbreaking research that…is deeply interdisciplinary, drawing on physics, mathematics, neuroscience, molecular biology, hyperbolic geometry, and even cosmology to help scientists better unravel the mysteries of the brain.
Sujan Shresta of the La Jolla Institute of Immunology will focus “on protecting the public from several medically relevant viruses, including dengue, Zika, West Nile, Powassan, and other pathogens that manipulate human immune cells and which have the potential to cause long-term disease. neurological problems such as brain fog and potentially even dementia.
Lisa Stowers, Scripps Research, “focuses on learning how the brain works in order to develop drugs and therapies to treat a wide variety of brain-related disorders, from depression to dementia.”
Daniela Valdez-Jasso, of the UC San Diego School of Medicine, “focuses on identifying diagnostic markers before it’s too late, understanding disease progression, and identifying opportunities to develop new drugs to treat the disease.”
More information about each researcher’s work and the Heroes Program is available at PrebysResearchHeroes.org.
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