Brody Brothers Endowment sponsors research team to embark on Alzheimer's, Parkinson's discovery

Scientists propose disrupting neuroimmune feedback loops, uncovering breakthrough medical therapies for notorious diseases.

The winning research team of the first Brody Brothers Endowment Inflammation Collaborative Grant say the award will support breakthrough research into the neurodegeneration that takes place in Alzheimer's and Parkinson's disease courses. It may lead to new therapeutic targets for patients living with the diseases.

The grant has already met one aim - to foster a new collaboration between research scientists at East Carolina University who normally work on fundamental biological matters in their own labs. The new sponsorship is designed to kickstart a team-based approach to big biomedical questions - in this case, molecular and cellular pathways to inflammation.

The winning proposal was developed by Dr. Srinivas Sriramula of the Department of Pharmacology and Toxicology, along with Drs. Alessandro Didonna, Karen Litwa and Erzsebet Szatmari of the Department of Anatomy and Cell Biology. The multidisciplinary research team's proposal, "Breaking Pathologic Neuroimmune Feedback Loops in Neurodegenerative Disorder" has Alzheimer's and Parkinson's diseases in its sights, but Sriramula said the discoveries could touch on disease progression closer to his research focus, hypertension and cardiovascular disease, too.

Parkinson's disease and Alzheimer's disease are the most common age-related neurodegenerative disorders, and chronic neuroinflammation is a characteristic of both.

"We'll find ways to prevent this inflammation and inflammation-initiated downstream signaling so we can have a future therapeutic target to treat," Sriramula said.

The Brody Brothers Endowment annually funds early research awards to medical school faculty across a range of areas. This new grant, larger than those awards, is innovative both for it's specific target - inflammation - and its call for a collaborative project scope.

Perhaps the best thing about the grant's request for proposals is simply that it assembled a new collaborative team, Sriramula said, "because, for example, Dr. Didonna is an expert in neurodegenerative diseases such as Parkinson's, Dr. Szatmari, in Alzheimer's disease. Then, Dr. Litwa is an expert in brain modeling, and my lab is interested in inflammation and disease modeling.

"We are a good team to act on this."

The $250,000 award supports research over an 18-month period.

"Eighteen months is a really accelerated timeline," said Litwa, "but we have a great team - we can identify some of the molecular pathways driving this chronic inflammation signature in these neurodegenerative disease courses."

The award process was highly competitive, drawing nine proposals that collectively involved 35 faculty members and 17 graduate and undergraduate students from 14 departments across the university. The breadth of participation underscores ECU's commitment to interdisciplinary collaboration and innovation in biomedical research.

"We're confident," Didonna said - "we will achieve our proposal aims in 18 months with the goal of submitting another proposal for NIH [National Institutes of Health] or DOD [Department of Defense] funding."

Brody Family's Diversified Investment in School's Students, Researchers

Earlier this year, cousins David and Laura Brody and Hyman and Stacy Brody grabbed headlines when they made a transformational $10 million gift to expand and strengthen the Brody Scholars program which funds four-year, full-tuition scholarships for several incoming students each year. Now in its fifth decade, there are more than 150 current and past Brody Scholars.

The Brody Brothers Endowment, funded by a donation from the Brody Brothers Foundation in 1999, is different. It is a distinct philanthropic fund and enterprise supporting the research mission of the school and the faculty in the developmental phase of their projects. The new Inflammation Collaborative Grant is the first award of its kind as part of the endowment.

"We will continue to support bold, collaborative research that tackles the most complex challenges in medicine today," the Brody family said in a statement. "The inaugural inflammation collaborative grant reflects our belief that meaningful breakthroughs happen when talented investigators from diverse disciplines come together, and this team is taking an innovative approach to understanding and eventually treating neuroinflammatory processes. It will improve outcomes here in the east, in our state and the world."

"The level of creativity and teamwork demonstrated through this process reflects the very best of our institution," Brody School of Medicine deans Dr. Michael Waldrum and Dr. Jason Higginson shared in an internal message to the entire East Carolina campus community. "We are deeply grateful to the Brody family for their visionary support and proud of all who contributed proposals that continue to push the boundaries of science."

New Frontiers, New Resources

"We can do experiments that I particularly never dreamed I could do," said Szatmari, who uses advanced imaging, cell biology, biochemistry and behavioral techniques in mouse models to study Alzheimer's disease.

Specifically, part of the research endeavor will make use of the Brody Integrative Genomics Core (BIG Core) to perform a detailed spatial transcriptomic profiling of the mouse brain and map at high resolution all the molecular pathways that are dysregulated upon disease onset. The planned research will also take advantage of the Center for Animal MRI at the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill to observe areas of the brain in mice and measure how neural connectivity changes with disease progress and, profoundly, how healthy functioning may be restored as inflammation is reduced.

"The Brody Brothers Endowment grant will allow us to complete these early studies," Sriramula said, "collect the preliminary feasibility data, and" continue as a collaborative funded by a long-term grant.

In any event, the Brody Brothers Endowment Inflammation Collaborative Grant is the opening bid - "the catalyst we needed to bring us all together," said Litwa.

More Stories