{"id":16417,"date":"2022-08-03T17:14:51","date_gmt":"2022-08-03T21:14:51","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/geiselmed.dartmouth.edu\/news\/?p=16417"},"modified":"2022-08-04T11:35:06","modified_gmt":"2022-08-04T15:35:06","slug":"dartmouths-supattapone-receives-prestigious-javits-neuroscience-investigator-award","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/geiselmed.dartmouth.edu\/news\/2022\/dartmouths-supattapone-receives-prestigious-javits-neuroscience-investigator-award\/","title":{"rendered":"Dartmouth\u2019s Supattapone Receives Prestigious Javits Neuroscience Investigator Award"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Surachai<\/a>
Surachai Supattapone, MD, PhD. Photo by Kurt Wehde<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Surachai Supattapone, MD, PhD, a professor of biochemistry and cell biology and of medicine at Dartmouth\u2019s Geisel School of Medicine, has received a Javits Neuroscience Investigator Award from the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke (NINDS). The prestigious $4.9 million award will provide up to seven years of funding for his research on prions\u2014infectious agents that cause fatal neurogenerative diseases.<\/p>\n

Created by an act of Congress in 1983, the Senator Jacob Javits Awards in the Neurosciences are named in honor of the late senator who for several years was a victim of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), a degenerative neurological disorder also known as Lou Gehrig\u2019s disease. Javits was a strong advocate for support of research in a wide variety of disorders of the brain and nervous system.<\/p>\n

Recipients of a Javits Neuroscience Investigator Award must have demonstrated exceptional scientific excellence and productivity in one of the areas of neurological research supported by the NINDS, have proposals of the highest scientific merit, and be judged highly likely to be able to continue to do research on the cutting edge of their science for seven years.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m delighted to receive this funding award. To me, it\u2019s really a recognition of the many valuable contributions that all of our lab members have made over the past 20-plus years,\u201d says Supattapone, who joined the medical school\u2019s faculty in 2001. \u201cI think this support gives us the flexibility to explore some new directions and ideas with our research that we otherwise couldn\u2019t do with a shorter-term grant.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Supattapone Lab<\/a> focuses its research efforts on understanding the molecular mechanisms of prions\u2014infectious agents of fatal brain diseases that include Creutzfeldt Jakob Disease (CJD) in humans and bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE) or \u201cMad Cow Disease\u201d in cows. There are currently no treatments for these diseases.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe thing that makes prions unusual is that they\u2019re not a virus, bacteria, or any other kind of conventional infectious agent,\u201d he explains. \u201cInstead, it\u2019s a protein that we all have in our brains, and what happens is that the protein changes shape into a misfolded form and that\u2019s what makes it infectious and able to replicate and destroy neurons.\u201d<\/p>\n

Supattapone and his research team employ a variety of advanced techniques, using animal, cell culture and test tube models, to study prion infectivity. They were the first to produce infectious prions in a test tube using chemically defined components, and to identify specific cofactor molecules as essential partners in this process.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re doing further studies now to better understand how that works, both in terms of how it affects the structure of the protein and what genes might regulate this conversion process,\u201d he says. \u201cIn addition, we hope that insights from our work will also be potentially applicable to other neurogenerative diseases such as Alzheimer\u2019s disease and Parkinson\u2019s disease in the future.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI am very pleased that Dr. Supattapone received this recognition,\u201d says Geisel Dean Duane Compton.\u00a0\u201cIt is a well-deserved honor from peers in the field of neuroscience recognizing his many groundbreaking discoveries about the pathologies caused by prions.\"<\/p>\n

Supattapone\u2019s leadership roles at Dartmouth have included serving as the chair for the Molecular and Cellular Biology Graduate Program, director for the Clinical Translational Science Master\u2019s Program, and director for the Cellular and Molecular Basis of Disease Course. He has been a standing member of two NIH study sections, holds seven patents, and has won several teaching awards at Geisel and at the University of California at San Francisco.<\/p>\n

Supattapone was elected as a Fellow to both the American Society for Microbiology and the American Association for the Advancement of Science in 2016. He was named to the Geisel Academy of Master Educators in 2014.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Surachai Supattapone, MD, PhD, a professor of biochemistry and cell biology and of medicine at Dartmouth\u2019s Geisel School of Medicine, has received a Javits Neuroscience Investigator Award from the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke. The prestigious $4.9 million award will provide up to seven years of funding for his research on prions\u2014infectious agents that cause fatal neurogenerative diseases. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":26,"featured_media":16418,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[9,1],"tags":[847,1082,790],"class_list":["post-16417","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-education","category-news","tag-home-feature","tag-javits-neuroscience-investigator-award","tag-surachai-supattapone","author-26"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/geiselmed.dartmouth.edu\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2022\/08\/SurachaiSupattapone_featured.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4r3h1-4gN","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/geiselmed.dartmouth.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16417","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/geiselmed.dartmouth.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/geiselmed.dartmouth.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/geiselmed.dartmouth.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/26"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/geiselmed.dartmouth.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=16417"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/geiselmed.dartmouth.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16417\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":16422,"href":"https:\/\/geiselmed.dartmouth.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16417\/revisions\/16422"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/geiselmed.dartmouth.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/16418"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/geiselmed.dartmouth.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16417"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/geiselmed.dartmouth.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16417"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/geiselmed.dartmouth.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16417"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}