Dr. Ting-Jiun Chen, PhD, receives a Career-Starter Research Grant for 2021-2022 from the Knights Templar Eye Foundation.
NEW YORK – May 20, 2021 /Press Release/ ––
Mount Sinai School of Medicine researcher Ting-Jiun Chen, PhD, has received a Career-Starter Research Grant for 2021-2022 from the Knights Templar Eye Foundation.
Dr. Chen, Postdoctoral Fellow in the labs of Dr. Hirofumi Morishita MD PhD at the Friedman Brain Institute and the Mindich Child Health and Development Institute at Mount Sinai School of Medicine, was awarded the grant for her work entitled, "Discover novel neuromodulatory therapeutic target for recovery from Amblyopia". The grant of $70,000 was given to Dr. Chen on May 20h.
"Our goal is to discover new regulatory mechanisms of plasticity to provide therapeutic targets and drugs to re-open the plasticity in the adult brain for recovery from Amblyopia" said Dr. Chen. "We will leverage new understanding of the cell-type specific cortical plasticity mechanism to identify drugs that putatively enhance cortical plasticity".
A 'lazy eye' or monocular cataract early in life results in an enduring loss of visual acuity (amblyopia) reflecting aberrant circuit remodeling within the primary visual cortex. Amblyopia affects two to four percent of the human population and exhibits little recovery in adulthood. Successful therapies for Amblyopia are therefore contingent on understanding the mechanism of adult brain plasticity.
If successful, the proposed project will identify small molecules with ability to rescue Amblyopia through cell-type specific mechanisms.
The Knights Templar Eye Foundation supports research that can help launch the careers of clinical or basic researchers committed to the prevention and cure of potentially blinding diseases in infants and children. They support clinical or basic research on conditions that can or may eventually be treated or prevented.
