Investigators Receive Bertarelli Collaborative Research Award

Artur Indzhykulian, MD, PhD, and Anne Takesian, PhD, of the Eaton-Peabody Laboratories at Mass. Eye and Ear and both Assistant Professors of Otolaryngology at Harvard Medcial School, have both received Bertarelli Collaborative Research Awards within the Bertarelli Program in Translational Neuroscience and Neuroengineering.

Dr. Indzhykulian’s award will support work on Usher syndrome, a devastating deafness and blindness. This project is a three-way collaboration among investigators at Harvard Medical School, the Institute of Molecular and Clinical Ophthalmology (Basel, Switzerland), and Dr. Indzhykulian’s laboratory. Togeth

er, they will develop three different strategies to repair the gene defect that mimics Usher syndrome in a mouse model in order to prevent deafness in this model.

Dr. Takesian’s award will support her project, "Targeting VIP interneurons to enhance auditory cortical plasticity." This is a collaborative grant with Dr. Bernardo Sabatini from the Neurobiology Department at Harvard Medical School.