MCG neuroscientist receives $2.3 million in funding from NIH

Danielle Mor, PhD, a neuroscientist in the Department of Neuroscience and Regenerative Medicine at the Medical College of Georgia (MCG) at Augusta University, will receive $2.3 million in funding as part of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) High-Risk, High-Reward Research program.

The program supports investigators at each career stage who propose innovative research that, due to its inherent risk, may struggle in the traditional NIH peer-review process. Investigators are encouraged to think beyond traditional bounds and to pursue trailblazing ideas in any area of research relevant to NIH’s mission to advance knowledge and enhance health.

Mor was one of only 40 scientists across the country to receive a NIH Director’s New Innovator Award, which supports unusually innovative research from early career investigators who are within 10 years of receiving their terminal degree or completing their residency program and who have not yet received an NIH R01 or equivalent grant.

Her lab’s focus is a sticky, toxic form of the protein alpha-synuclein, which gums up the work of our neurons and kills them — a hallmark of Parkinson’s disease. There is increasing evidence that suggests that pathology may first appear in neurons innervating the gastrointestinal tract and may spread as misfolded proteins to the central nervous system.

Mor wants to find out how and why that happens and uses the small nematode, C. elegans, as her tool. These roundworms are transparent throughout their lives, and despite their size of about .039 inches, have a gene number and gene pool similar to humans.

By using a combination of RNA-sequencing, imaging and high-throughput genetic and drug screening approaches, and because of their small size and lifelong transparency, Mor and her lab team can watch this “gumming up” happen over and over in real time, identify the genetic regulators involved and determine the efficacy of novel treatments – all at the same time.

“That bold scope is what makes this research inherently risky, but also high-reward,” Mor explained.

An estimated 1 million people are living with Parkinson’s in the United States alone.

Mor earned a bachelor’s degree in neuroscience and behavior from Wesleyan University in Middletown, Connecticut, and a PhD in neuroscience from the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine in Philadelphia. She came to MCG after completing her postdoctoral fellowship at Princeton in 2020.