June 19, 2024 – The Hereditary Disease Foundation is honored to present our 2024 Nancy S. Wexler Young Investigator Prize to Rachel Harding, MBiochem, DPhil, Assistant Professor at the University of Toronto, and Principal Investigator at the Structural Genomics Consortium.
This distinctive recognition is presented annually to an early-career researcher whose work reflects the highest caliber of excellence, diligence, and creative thinking. The prize recipient is selected by the HDF Scientific Advisory Board. The Nancy S. Wexler Prize honors the pioneering spirit, relentless dedication, and enduring optimism of Nancy S. Wexler, PhD, President of HDF.
Dr. Harding embodies these traits with her strong commitment to collaboration and her eager willingness to share proteins that she makes with researchers worldwide to help find a treatment for Huntington’s disease. She is one of the field’s leading up-and-coming structural biologists and she believes collaborative efforts will help move the needle faster for Huntington’s disease research.
A key focus of Dr. Harding’s research is the huntingtin protein, mutated in people with Huntington’s disease. Huntington’s is a devastating, incurable, genetic, neurodegenerative disease caused by a CAG-tract expansion in the Huntingtin gene. Her lab studies the structure and function of the huntingtin protein in its wildtype and disease forms to better understand the mechanisms of disease, and find new avenues of therapeutic intervention.
Dr. Harding’s HDF-funded work advances the ability to precisely track proteins within cells, focusing on how huntingtin interacts with a largely understudied protein called HAP40. Dr. Harding will use her novel tools to locate these molecules and other associated proteins to study how this might differ between cells with and without the gene that causes HD, and what happens when HAP40 is removed.
HDF is honored to present Dr. Harding this well-deserved award to continue work on new ways to treat Huntington’s disease.
Congratulations, Dr. Harding!