KGI Student Awarded Prestigious Fellowship to Research Huntington’s disease
KGI student Courtney Hanlon was one of only three students in the country awarded a 2014 Donald A. King Summer Research Fellowship. The purpose of the fellowship program is two-fold: to attract the brightest young scientists into the field of Huntington's disease (HD) research and to facilitate meaningful HD research to clarify the biological mechanisms underlying HD pathology. The Huntington Disease Society of America's (HDSA) Scientific Advisory Board established the fellowship in 2005 in honor of the late Donald King, a tireless advocate for individuals and families affected by the genetic neurodegenerative disease that progressively causes total physical and mental deterioration.
"My goal is to learn how to study Huntington's disease at the basic science level," says Hanlon. "I intend to gain a strong understanding of Huntington's disease and its unmet clinical needs so I can apply what I have learned to my future research and ultimate clinical practice."
Hanlon, an aspiring physician and student in KGI's postbaccalaureate premedical certificate (PPC) program, will be working under the guidance of faculty members Animesh Ray and Ian Phillips on a project titled, "Gene editing of human neuronal stem cells at the Huntington's locus by targeted homologous recombination." The project's goal is to see if HD can be successfully modeled in a human stem cell that was altered to contain the mutant huntingtin gene.
"Courtney is an outstanding pre-med student who was a clinical researcher at Harvard's Dana Faber Hospital before joining the PPC program," Dr. Phillips says. "We are looking forward to her making progress on the basic science of Huntington's disease."
The HDSA Scientific Advisory Board reviewed and scored the proposals based on a number of criteria including the quality of the candidate's academic achievements, the mentoring plan for the candidate, the scientific rigor of the experimental design, and the feasibility of achieving significant deliverables in a short summer timeframe.
"Courtney will gain valuable insights on how cutting-edge biomedical research is done. She will be able to critically evaluate original research papers, learn new techniques, analyze and interpret data, troubleshoot, and practice scientific presentation," Dr. Ray says. "There is no doubt that the scientific steps outlined in Courtney's proposal are important for understanding the fundamental biology of Huntington's disease."