THE ROLE OF CELLULAR SIGNALING MECHANISMS IN THE DEVELOPMENT OF EPILEPSY

Investigators:

Dr. Anderson is a child neurologist who joined The Cain Foundation Laboratories in 1993, as a post-doctoral fellow and progressed to an independent physician-scientist with NIH funding, first through a mentored award then with independent NIH grants. 

The focus of her work is to understand the cellular mechanisms that underlie the development of epilepsy with the overall goal of identifying novel targets for the treatment of epilepsy.  Early-on Dr. Anderson sought to identify a mechanism involved in increasing excitability of nerve cells.  She found that a particular ion channel in the nerve cell wall was a target of signaling pathways, such as the pathway coupled to noradrenaline.  Changes in the ion channel caused by increasing activity in signaling molecules resulted in increased excitability and seizures. 

Dr. Anderson went on to show that if the changes in the ion channel are blocked by inhibiting activation of signaling molecules, the seizures are blocked.  These findings strongly suggest that the signaling molecules and the ion channel she studied are critical to the generation of seizures.  Furthermore, her studies suggest a novel locus for directing the treatment of seizures.  These findings are the basis of a recently filed patent:  MEK Inhibitors in the Treatment of Epilepsy. 

Dr. Anderson is now characterizing the molecular steps involved in modifying the ion channels and how this process changes during brain development.  Recent studies in her lab are focused on identifying another class of targets of signaling molecules, transcription factors.  These targets are located at the nerve cell DNA and after modification by signaling molecules these targets change gene expression.  The overall result of this process is making new proteins that are possibly involved in the process of creating seizure circuits in the brain.

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Last Modified: April 26, 2006