To complement our 2018 Research Report, George and Leora will be sharing this year’s HD research highlights in our 2018 Research Year in Review Webinar on Wednesday, January 16th, 2019, from 12-1 pm Eastern time.
Register to attend the webinar here.
New Year, New SAB Member
HDSA’s Scientific Advisory Board (SAB) is composed of HD researchers, physicians, and family members who evaluate applications for our three funding programs on a yearly cycle. This year we welcome to the SAB Dr. Amber Southwell, Assistant Professor at the University of Central Florida. Dr. Southwell has been working in preclinical therapy development for Huntington disease (HD) since 2002. In 2009 she earned her PhD at the California Institute of Technology Institute of Technology working with Dr. Paul Patterson to develop an intrabody gene therapy for HD. From 2009-2016, she did postdoctoral research at the University of British Columbia with Dr. Michael Hayden where she developed several novel mouse models of HD, a selective mutant huntingtin gene silencing therapy, and a CSF biomarker for brain huntingtin. She began her laboratory research group at the University of Central Florida in January 2017, where she continues these studies as well as new research on modifiers of disease onset. Dr. Southwell is helping to train a new generation of HD scientists, and she and her lab are active participants in nearby HDSA events.
HDSA Berman-Topper Fellow’s Open Science Blog
2018 HDSA Berman-Topper fellow Dr. Rachel Harding is working at the University of Toronto on a project that is dissecting how huntingtin protein interacts with other biological molecules inside of cells. She is committed to the idea of “open science,” freely sharing data with researchers and the public to speed HD science and promote awareness. She recently described a recently finished manuscript about her HDSA-funded work, and if you’re interested you can even read the draft of her manuscript and access her raw data.
