Grajales-Reyes receives Early Independence Award from NIH – Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis - Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis

Part of High-Risk, High-Reward program, grant supports outstanding inferior scientists

Gary Grajales-Reyes, MD, PhD, an adjunct prof of pathology & immunology astatine Washington University School of Medicine successful St. Louis, has received an Early Independence Award from the National Institutes of Health (NIH). The grant supports outstanding inferior scientists with the intellect, technological creativity, drive, and maturity to bypass oregon shorten the accepted postdoctoral grooming play to motorboat autarkic probe careers. Grajales-Reyes plans to enactment connected processing caller and cost-effective cell-based therapies for Alzheimer’s disease.

Grajales-Reyes received 1 of 103 awards granted by the NIH Common Fund’s High-Risk, High-Reward program. The programme aims to spur technological innovation and find by providing enactment for outstanding scientists to prosecute perchance transformative but risky probe projects. The 103 awards full astir $285 cardinal successful enactment implicit 5 years, opening successful 2022, pending the availability of funds.

As a subordinate of the Clinical Pathology Physician Scientist Program astatine Barnes-Jewish Hospital and the School of Medicine, Grajales-Reyes conducted postdoctoral probe successful the laboratory of Marco Colonna, MD, the Robert Rock Belliveau, MD, Professor of Pathology. His enactment focused connected processing a caller attraction for Alzheimer’s illness based connected utilizing alleged chimeric antigen receptors (CAR) to reprogram immune cells to region toxic clumps of the Alzheimer’s macromolecule amyloid beta from the brain.

With the enactment of this award, Grajales-Reyes plans to usage CAR-based approaches to trim amyloid plaques successful the brains of radical successful the earliest stages of Alzheimer’s disease, thereby halting the disease’s progression and forestalling dementia. Preliminary information suggests that CAR-based approaches could supply a lasting simplification successful amyloid plaques without requiring predominant repetition medication of the therapy.  His attack has the imaginable to alteration the attraction of Alzheimer’s and perchance different encephalon diseases characterized by macromolecule aggregation.