This grant proposal is in response to RFA-OD-09-005, """"""""Recovery Act limited Competition: Supporting New Faculty Recruitment to Enhance Research Resources through Biomedical Research Core Centers"""""""" and is entitled """"""""Translational Neuroscientist and the Hope Center Program on Protein Folding and Neurodegeneration (HCPPFN)"""""""". The goal of this newly formed center is to develop better ways to diagnose and treat neurodegenerative diseases through an understanding of the underlying molecular mechanisms of disease. A common theme of these disorders is the central role of protein mis-folding and aggregation leading to neuronal cell death. To the scientific goals of the center we have identified 15 faculty within the institution who are currently using a variety of approaches to understanding the molecular basis of these disorders. Many of these individuals already collaborate on projects but through the center we are fostering an interdisciplinary approach and encourage collaboration between center laboratories. The goal of the current application is to recruit a junior faculty with expertise in the biochemical analysis of protein folding/aggregation into this interdisciplinary program, to enable this individual to develop an independent research program on the biochemistry of protein folding and aggregation in relation to neurodegenerative disease and to enhance the research of the center through new collaborative projects enabled by this recruitment. Six faculty from this center, including the new recruit, will be located in a new state-of-the-art research facility, the BJC Institute for Health, located in the center of the medical school campus. This facility is the centerpiece of the Biomed 21 initiative to promote interdisciplinary translational research. The HCPPFN will work with the Depts. of Biochemistry and Neurology to recruit and mentor a junior faculty with appropriate expertise and to encourage collaborative projects through regular """"""""chalk talks"""""""" among center faculty and targeted pilot funding from both internal and external sources. It is anticipated that these pilot projects will develop into larger collaborative projects such new program projects.
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