$220,000 NIH Grant for CMT research!!!

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College Biologist Lara Wins $220,000 NIH Grant

July 02, 2008

http://iberkshires.com/story/27644/-College-Biologist-Lara-

-Wins-220-000-NIH-Grant.html

WILLIAMSTOWN - The National Institutes of Health (NIH) has awarded a

two-year grant of $220,076 to College Assistant Professor of

Biology Lara D. , in support of her research on Charcot-Marie-

Tooth disease or CMT.

CMT is the most common inherited neuromuscular disease, affecting as

many as one in every 2,500 individuals. CMT usually shows dominant

inheritance and symptoms generally appear during adolescence or young

adulthood. It is characterized by degeneration of long motor and

sensory axons, which results in muscle atrophy and skeletal

deformities.

's research will use zebrafish as a model system to investigate

disease mutations in two small heat shock proteins, HSP27 and HSPB8,

which can cause either CMT or the closely related disease Distal

Hereditary Motor Neuropathy (dHMN). The results of these studies will

help to better understand the cell biological events leading to axon

degeneration in CMT and dHMN.

Since these diseases are likely determined, at least in part, by

environmental factors, the results of these studies could have

implications for the prevention and management of these diseases.

's primary research has been published in a number of

prestigious scientific journals, including Neuron and Gene, as well

as the compendium " The Zebrafish: Cellular and Developmental

Biology. " This is her third NIH grant award.

received her B.A. from the University of California at San

Diego and her Ph.D. from the University of Washington. She did her

postdoctoral work in neurobiology and anatomy at the University of

Utah.