2024 Spivack Neuroscience Awards Announced

Jack Spivack established a fund for neuroscience research in 2013 to recognize and support clinical or basic research in Parkinson’s, Alzheimer’s, Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy and other neurological disorders. The 2024 Spivack Neurosciences Pilot Awards are:

Distinguished Neuroscientist Award

Vanna Zachariou, PhD, Edward Avedisian Professor and chair of pharmacology, physiology & biophysics, studies mechanisms underlying chronic pain and opioid use disorders. Her laboratory uses preclinical models of nerve injury and peripheral inflammation to understand the molecular mechanisms underlying severe pain disorders and to identify and validate safe and effective treatment targets. She also focuses on complex regional pain syndrome, characterized by hypersensitivity, edema, altered skin color, drastically reduced motor range and continuing pain disproportionate to the causative event. Dr Serafini and other members of her team will study peripheral nervous system and immune pathways underlining complex regional pain syndrome using genomic and proteomic methodologies.

Spivack Pilot Awards

Shanshan Sheehy, ScD, assistant professor of medicine, studies whether perceived racism and structural racism increase the risk of stroke, and whether environmental injustice contributes to the disproportional stroke burden among Black women. Black Americans have a substantially higher prevalence of established stroke risk factors and are nearly twice as likely as White Americans to experience stroke. Disproportionate numbers of Black Americans have faced multiple life adversities, including racism, that are increasingly recognized as social determinants of health.

Ignaty Leshchiner, PhD and co-PI Stacy Andersen, PhD, both assistant professors of medicine, study nucleic acid biomarkers in blood compared to cerebrospinal fluid in neurogenerative disease and healthy brain aging in individuals with exceptional longevity. They use nucleic acid methylation patterns to identify the cell-of-origin of circulating molecules and characterize their genetic and epigenetic changes with age to develop blood-based monitoring techniques to study brain aging and disease.

Philipp Mews, PhD, assistant professor of pharmacology, physiology & biophysics, studies how drugs like cocaine modify gene activity within the brain, ultimately leading to addiction. By precisely mapping gene activity across brain areas and even single cells, they study how cocaine alters gene programs to make relapse more likely. A more targeted intervention at the genetic level could potentially transform our approach to combating addiction.

Congratulations!