|
|
|
|
July 23, 2008
TRAVIS ROY FOUNDATION AWARDS RESEARCH GRANT TO MGH-HARVARD SCIENTIST
Grant to Support Ground-Breaking Research By Dr. Jeffrey MacklisIs Single Largest Travis Roy Foundation Grant Ever Awarded
BOSTON, MA – The Travis Roy Foundation today announced that it has awarded a $150,000 grant to Dr. Jeffrey Macklis, MD, D.HST, Director of the Massachusetts General Hospital-Harvard Medical School Center for Nervous System Repair. The announcement was made by Travis Roy, Travis Roy Foundation Founder and Trustee. A Boston-based 501(c)(3) nonprofit, the Travis Roy Foundation distributes grants on a quarterly basis to spinal cord injury survivors in financial need and to research facilities investigating potential treatment and cures for spinal cord paralysis.
The largest single research grant ever awarded by the Travis Roy Foundation, it marks a change in philosophy by the Foundation, which had previously distributed smaller grants to a number of different organization rather than targeting its resources to larger entities.
“Dr. Jeffrey Macklis’ work is cutting-edge research, and we want to be associated with the leaders in the field,” Travis Roy said. “We are fortunate to be based in a city that offers so much in the area of research, and we are hopeful that our newly born relationship with MGH and Harvard is just the beginning and will bring more awareness to Dr. Macklis’ lab and the ground-breaking work they are doing.”
The research grant will support Dr. Macklis’ proposal “Development and Growth of Corticospinal Motor Neurons for Spinal Cord Repair.” The project will look at issues related to regeneration of injured axons and neurons, nerve cells that let our brains communicate with our bodies.
“My laboratory’s views and The Foundation’s views and visions are very much aligned—100%," Dr. Macklis said. “We both want to bring the most rigorous, state-of-the-art biology directly toward future treatments for real people with real disability. This support lets us take more risks to get there quicker. The goal is to change the world by accelerating what is now at least really conceivable.”
The multi-pronged project hopes to contribute to enhanced future treatment of spinal cord injuries (SCI). The researchers propose to take a goal-oriented approach to understand, investigate and ultimately translate developmental biology of the corticospinal tract (CST) and its constituent corticospinal motor neurons towards human therapy in SCI.
“This new, generous, and forward-thinking support by The Travis Roy Foundation will be incredibly important to rapid acceleration of our most ambitious and venturesome research, aimed toward therapeutic approaches to spinal cord injury,” Dr. Macklis said. “Supported by this flexible grant, our laboratory will expand and accelerate our recent identification and investigation of ‘combinatorial’ molecular controls over the development, axon growth, spinal cord level-specific connections, and maintenance of corticospinal tract neurons, which are damaged in SCI, and central to the loss of motor function in SCI.”
Dr. Jeffrey D. Macklis, MD, D.HST - A professor of stem cell and regenerative biology at Harvard and professor of neuroscience, neurology and neurosurgery at HMS, Macklis is credited with starting a new field of biology. The goal of his research is to achieve the cellular repair of the brain and/or spinal cord circuits damaged by diseases such as ALS, stroke, Alzheimer’s, and spinal cord injuries.
Since 2002, Dr. Macklis has been Director of the newly established Massachusetts General Hospital-Harvard Medical School Center for Nervous System Repair (MGH-HMS CNSR). He is also Program Head, Neuroscience, Harvard Stem Cell Institute and Co-Director for the Regeneration and Repair Program of the Harvard Center for Neurodegeneration and Repair. He attended MIT, HMS, and graduate school at MIT within the Harvard-MIT Division of Health Sciences and Technology. He was a postdoctoral fellow in developmental neuroscience with Richard Sidman at HMS. He trained clinically in Internal Medicine at Brigham and Women’s Hospital and adult neurology in the Harvard-Longwood Neurological Training Program. Until moving to MGH in 2003 to establish the new MGH-HMS CNSR, he was in the Division of Neuroscience at Children’s Hospital, and was Co-Director of the Parkinson’s Disease and Related Disorders Program at Brigham and Women’s Hospital.
-30- |
|
|
|
|
