You Never Know Which Researcher Will Find a Cure

September 30, 2005

San Francisco Business Times - September 29, 2005

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San Francisco Business Times - 11:59 AM PDT Thursday

Three at Stanford win NIH awards, funding

Three of the 13 researchers in the United States who won top National

Institutes of Health awards are Stanford University School of Medicine

scientists.

The awards include up to $500,000 each in annual funding for five years.

Stanford said on Thursday it has more Pioneer Award winners this year than

any other school or institution. The winners will be announced by the NIH

Sept. 29.

The Stanford winners are Rando; Pehr Harbury, and Karl Deisseroth.

Rando, associate professor of neurology and neurological sciences, is

looking for ways to enhance the potential of stem cells to repair damaged

tissue in old people. His goal is to figure out how to compensate for the

age-related decline in the body's repair capability. His work also has the

potential to help sufferers of degenerative diseases such as muscular

dystrophy.

He said his research team has some data to suggest that it isn't changes in

the stem cells that reduces their ability to repair tissue with age, but

changes in the environment, or niche, where they reside. This is what he'll

use the award money to explore.

Harbury, associate professor of biochemistry, was also recently named a 2005

MacArthur Fellow. He is trying to devise ways to use DNA molecules as

blueprints for the synthesis of small chemical compounds that may be useful

in drug design. He hopes to develop an approach to designing drugs much more

quickly and cheaply than is currently possible.

Deisseroth, assistant professor of bioengineering and of psychiatry and

behavioral sciences, has been focusing on the electrical circuitry of the

brain, on the theory that some mental illness may be due to circuitry

glitches rather than chemical imbalances.

Deisseroth hopes to develop two bioengineering tools using his Pioneer Award

money, both using high-speed flashes of light to probe neurons. One would

enable him to observe the high-speed circuitry of the brain on the

millisecond time scale at which it operates.

Silicon Valley / San Business Journal

Lynn

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