2023 Hereditary Disease Foundation Funded Researchers

Funding Brilliant Science

The Hereditary Disease Foundation is excited to announce new grants and postdoctoral fellowships to thirteen scientists from around the world focused on finding treatments and cures for Huntington’s disease. We’ll bring you more details about their research projects in the months ahead.

Funded Recipients, Institutions, and Project Titles:

Jeff Carroll, PhD 
University of Washington 
Exploring the entire intact huntingtin genetic message in human brains

Katherine Croce, PhD 
Columbia University Medical Center, NY 
Mentor: Ai Yamamoto, PhD 
Clearing aggregates to treat Huntington’s disease

Steven Finkbeiner, MD, PhD 
The J. David Gladstone Institutes; University of California, San Francisco 
Investigation of ubiquitin regulators as genetic modifiers in Huntington’s disease age of onset

Joseph Hamilton, PhD 
University College London (UCL) Institute of Neurology, United Kingdom 
Mentor: Sarah J. Tabrizi, FRCP, PhD, FMedSci 
Exploring the role of the PMS1 gene in Huntington’s disease

Rachel Harding, PhD 
University of Toronto, Ontario, Canada 
Investigating how the Huntington’s disease protein interacts with genetic material

Ryan Hildebrandt, PhD 
University of Florida 
Mentor: Eric T. Wang, PhD 
Investigating neuron transport issues in Huntington’s disease

Ali Khoshnan, PhD 
University of Southern California 
Studies on gut defects in Huntington’s disease

Tamara Maiuri, PhD 
McMaster University, Hamilton, Ontario, Canada 
Can we use DNA damage levels in HD patient blood to guide clinical trials?

Christopher E. Pearson, PhD 
The Hospital for Sick Children (SickKids), Toronto, Ontario, Canada 
Developing specific antibodies to explore Alt-RPA, a modifier of HD

Devon Pendlebury, PhD 
University of California, Irvine 
Mentor: Leslie M. Thompson, PhD 
Investigating how DNA damage repair is faulty in Huntington’s disease

Partha Sarkar, PhD 
The University of Texas Medical Branch at Galveston 
Loss of genome integrity in Huntington’s disease

Chiara Scaramuzzino, PhD 
Grenoble Institut des Neurosciences-INSERM, France 
Restoring organelle trafficking to rescue HD

William Yang, MD, PhD
University of California, Los Angeles 
Probing Huntingtin binding protein HAP40 in Cortical Biology and Huntington’s disease pathogenesis