The Transformative Scholar Awardsrds from Mass General Neuroscience encourage and support young investigators in conducting laboratory and/or clinical research in the Neurosciences, Neurodegeneration, Brain Health, and Tinnitus. The awards offer junior investigators at the level of Instructor or Assistant Professor with an MD and/or Ph.D. a commitment of $150,000 intended to support salary and/or research expenses during a two-year period at Mass General.
This year, 41 applications from 8 MGH departments were submitted. Through the generous support of our donors, 5 outstanding proposals were funded. Congratulations to the deserving awardees!
Transformative Scholar Award in Neuroscience: Dr. Jacqueline Clauss
Dr. Claus is an adult, child, and adolescent psychiatrist and an instructor in psychiatry at Harvard Medical School (HMS) and Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH). She completed a PhD in neuroscience, focusing on functional MRI and neuroimaging of behavioral inhibition, a risk factor for anxiety disorders.
Structural imaging of limbic subregions longitudinally in clinical high-risk for psychosis
Young people who hear voices, see things others do not see, or have difficulty expressing their thoughts may meet criteria for clinical-high risk for psychosis syndrome. This syndrome is associated with increased risk for psychotic disorders and for multiple severely impairing psychiatric illnesses; however, to date, we lack predictors of these multiple outcomes. In this proposal, we will collect cutting edge high-field neuroimaging to examine structures of three subcortical structures likely involved in the clinical high-risk for psychosis syndrome, including the hippocampus, amygdala, and bed nucleus of the stria terminalis (BNST).
Transformative Scholar Award in Neuroscience: Dr. Leonora Balaj
Dr. Balaj is Assistant Professor of Neurosurgery at the Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard Medical School and an Assistant in Neuroscience and an Investigator at the Massachusetts General Hospital.
Molecular stratification of brain tumors using liquid biopsy
Gliomas, the most common type of brain tumor, are among the deadliest of cancers. Recent WHO classification highlights the importance of molecular subtyping in disease stratification and prognostication. Traditionally, tissue testing for glioma specific mutations relies on the use of multiple tests with a turnaround time of 1 to 3 weeks. This can lead to delay in diagnosis and initiation of targeted therapy. To circumvent these challenges, we propose a novel multiplex digital PCR assay, GLIDX, for rapid tissue diagnostics and molecular stratification of gliomas using tumor tissue and plasma samples.
Transformative Scholar Award in Brain Health: Dr. Matteo Fecchio
Matteo Fecchio, Ph.D., Principal Investigator, is an Instructor of Neurology at Harvard Medical School and Research Scientist at the MGH Lab for NeuroImaging of Coma and Consciousness.
Optimization and Multimodal Validation of TMS-EEG in the ICU
In intensive care units (ICUs), clinicians assess the chances of unresponsive patients with severe brain injuries for long-term recovery and provide families with a prognosis upon which decisions about life-sustaining therapy are made. To date, withdrawal of life-sustaining therapy (WLST) is the most common cause of death (~80%) in patients with Disorders of Consciousness (DoC), and most WLST decisions are made without clear evidence about a patient’s state of consciousness or long-term potential for recovery. The Perturbational Complexity Index (PCI) has been validated in controls and chronic DoC patients as a brain-based measure of consciousness and, with unprecedented specificity and sensitivity, is ideally poised to fill this clinical gap.
Transformative Scholar Award in Neurodegeneration: Dr. Anna Goodheart
Anna is currently an Instruction in Neurology, a clinician in both the Memory Disorders and Movement Disorders clinics at MGH, and a clinical and translational researcher.
Testing [18F]FEOBV acetylcholine PET as a marker of prodromal disease and disease progression in dementia with Lewy bodies
Dementia with Lewy bodies (DLB) lacks an objective marker of disease progression, leading to challenges in clinical research, particularly clinical trials. In DLB, the decimation of the basal forebrain cholinergic system is related to cognitive and neuropsychiatric symptoms. This project will evaluate the presynaptic cholinergic neuron PET ligand [18F]FEOBV as a biomarker of disease progression in dementia with Lewy bodies (DLB) and rapid eye movement sleep behavior disorder (RBD).
Transformative Scholar Award in Tinnitus: Dr. Giovanni Battistella
Dr. Battistella is an Instructor in Otolaryngology-Head and Neck Surgery at Harvard Medical School and Massachusetts Eye and Ear. He is a biomedical engineer with extensive experience acquiring, analyzing, and interpreting structural and functional MRI data.
Spatial and temporal imaging biomarkers of tinnitus
Tinnitus, or ‘ringing in the ear,’ is a common and debilitating hearing disorder that lacks treatment options. In most cases, tinnitus stems from pathological activity of the auditory cortex, but may be associated with peripheral hearing loss. We propose implementing a multimodal imaging approach of resting-state functional magnetic resonance imaging (rs-fMRI) and magnetoencephalography (MEG) to provide important clues leading to a comprehensive understanding of the neural correlates of the disorder.
Mass General Neuroscience
Mass General Neuroscience was launched in 2018 by the chiefs of the departments of Neurology, Neurosurgery and Psychiatry. Together, Merit Cudkowicz, MD, MSc, Bob Carter, MD, PhD and Maurizio Fava, MD, created a vision for providing compassionate, integrated, multidisciplinary care for patients with brain and nervous system disease and their families. The leadership team works closely with other neuroscience leaders from across the hospital to ensure the advancement of collaborative neuroscience.
