RS MacDonald Seedcorn Fund - Previous Awards

Previous Awards

Animated picture of yellow coins piled up
RS MacDonald Seedcorn Funding
fosters interdisciplinary research

CDP = Centre for Dementia Prevention, EMC = Euan MacDonald Centre for MND Research, JBRL = Jennifer Brown Research Laboratory, MMEC = Muir Maxwell Epilepsy Centre, PWC = Patrick Wild Centre for Research into Autism, Fragile X Syndrome, and Intellectual Disabilities

October 2018

In the October 2018 funding round we received 30 applications requesting a total of £143,360. We were able to fund 10 proposals, allocating £41,825. 36% of funded proposals were from postdoctoral researchers.

  • Cathy Abbott (Genetics & Molecular Medicine, plus EMC, MMEC, PWC), Using a mouse model to explore the link between epileptic encephalopathy and neurodegeneration
  • Antonis Asiminis (Discovery Brain Sciences, plus PWC), Prey-capture: an ethologically relevant paradigm to study cognitive and sensory processing in rodents
  • Catherina Becker, (Discovery Brain Sciences, plus EMC), Movers and shakers - the role of microglia in restorative neurogenesis after spinal cord injury
  • David Breen (Clinical Brain Sciences), Cerebrospinal α-synuclein RT-QuIC in multiple system atrophy: a clinical and neuropathological study
  • Amanda Drake (Cardiovascular Sciences, plus JBRL), Investigating the role of early life stress on epigenetic dysregulation in the hypothalamus
  • Jenna Gregory and Marcelo Barria (Clinical Brain Sciences, plus EMC), Investigating the clinico-pathological correlation between differential folding conformations of TDP-43 and disease progression in amyotrophic lateral sclerosis
  • Matthew Horrocks (Chemistry), The time evolution of synapses at the nanoscale using super-resolution microscopy
  • Yu-Ting Huang (Discovery Brain Sciences, plus EMC), Developing in utero gene therapy to treat spinal muscular atrophy (SMA)
  • Declan King (Discovery Brain Sciences), Equipment for human brain embedding for Transmission Electron Microscopy – for use on Lothian Birth Cohort tissue and by collaborators in Edinburgh Neuroscience
  • Bhuvaneish Selvaraj (Clinical Brain Sciences, plus EMC), C9ORF72 astrocytes induced transcriptome dysregulation in motor neurons

March 2018

In the March 2018 funding round we received 15 applications requesting a total of £72,354. We were able to fund 10 proposals, allocating £33,544:

  • Yanick Crow (Genetics & Molecular Medicine), Study of Mendelian-induced NNROS dysfunction in human brain tissue
  • Christos Gkogkas (Discovery Brain Sciences, plus PWC), High resolution structural studies of an intrinsically disordered protein
  • Callister Harper (Discovery Brain Sciences, plus MMEC and PWC), Investigating changes to synaptic protein turnover in Drosophila models of neurodegenerative disorders
  • Mandy Jackson (Discovery Brain Sciences, plus EMC), Determining the molecular diversity of cerebellar Purkinje cells
  • Sarah Jaekel (Regenerative Medicine), Linking regenerative pathological measures with Single Nucleotide Polymorphisms in Multiple Sclerosis Patients to aid prediction of prognosis
  • Neil Mabbott (Roslin Institute), Redefining the role of the microglia in CNS prion disease pathogenesis
  • Kristin Nicodemus (Genetics & Molecular Medicine), Examining Social Networks in Mental Ill Health using the TalkLife Database
  • Gerard Thompson (Clinical Brain Sciences), Synaptic Density Imaging with Positron Emission Tomography in Large, Non-Primate Mammals
  • Thanasis Tsanas (Usher Institute), Objective longitudinal assessment of Parkinson’s disease using a smartwatch wearable sensor: quantifying activity, sleep, and circadian variability symptoms
  • Antonine Vallatos (Clinical Brain Sciences), Probing small vessel disease related changes in blood-brain- barrier permeability: a novel protocol for quantitative MRI- tissue correlation

 

October 2017

In the October 2017 funding round we received 30 applications requesting a total of £139,422. We were able to fund 10 proposals, allocating £31,100: 

  • Claire Davies (Reproductive Health), Investigating sex differences in microglia function during central nervous system remyelination: implications for therapeutic strategies for multiple sclerosis
  • Jill Fowler (Discovery Brain Sciences, plus CDP), Investigating the acute and chronic effects of mild stroke on cerebral blood flow levels with arterial spin labelling: correlation with neuroinflammation
  • Chris Henstridge (Discovery Brain Sciences, plus CDP and EMC), Identifying alterations in the synaptic proteome of Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis patients
  • Raphael Hesse (Discovery Brain Sciences, plus CDP and EMC), Increasing array tomography output by streamlining the analysis workflow
  • Matt Livesey (Discovery Brain Sciences, plus EMC), Mechanistic exploration of human synaptic plasticity.  
  • Ruth Morgan and Andrew McKechanie (Clinical Brain Sciences, plus PWC) Glucocorticoid metabolism and the role of Carbonyl Reductase 1 in Down Syndrome.
  • Tom Pratt (Discovery Brain Scienes, plus PWC), Using human brain organoids to study neurodevelopmental components of the 16p11.2 CNV phenotype.
  • Gülsen Sürmeli (Discovery Brain Sciences), Activity tagging of neurons for calcium imaging applications
  • Tom Wishart (The Roslin Institute, plus CDP and EMC), MRI of a novel CRISPR generated sheep model for a human childhood neurodegenerative disease
  • Lida Zoupi (Regenerative Medicine), Automated tissue processing for electron microscopy

 

March 2017

The inaugural call (March 2017) of the RS MacDonald Seedcorn Fund resulted in 26 applications requesting a total of £117,301. We were able to fund 11, allocating £43,707:

  • Maqsood Ahmed (Regenerative Medicine), Defining the role of extracellular matrix proteins in the glioblastoma stem cell niche.
  • Javier Escudero, Michael Young, Ailsa McLellan and Mark Richardson (Engineering, plus MMEC), EEG networks as a potential predictor for treatment response to antiepileptic drugs.  
  • Alfredo Gonzalez-Sulser (Integrative Physiology, plus MMEC), Wireless Optogenetics for Epilepsy.
  • Ewout Groen (Integrative Physiology, plus EMC), Developing a novel method for cell type-specific analysis of local translation.
  • Mandy Jackson (Integrative Physiology, EMC), Investigating a link between glutamate transporter dysregulation and translational control.
  • Paul Skehel (Integrative Physiology, plus EMC), Proteomic characterization of new rat MND model.
  • Anna Williams and Colin Smith (Clinical Brain Science, plus EMC), The Macro-Imager - recording the gross pathology of donated human brains and spinal cords in the post mortem room.
  • Sergiy Sylantyev, Noboru Komiyama and Melanie Stefan (Clinical Brain Sciences, plus PWC), Experimental investigations and modelling of NMDA receptors potentiation generated by mGluRs via different pathways
  • Tomonori Takeuchi (Cognitive & Neural Systems), Optogenetic activation of potential novel drug-target genes for memory enhancement
  • Thomas Theil (Integrative [hysiology, plus PWC), Characterising INPP5E‘s role in human forebrain development using brain organoids
  • Adam Waldman (Clinical Brain Sciences), Multimodal MRI/PET in adult glioma