Biochemistry Professor, Maria DeRosa, Honoured With 2011 Research Achievement Award For Work on Biosensors and Synthetic DNA – Exchange Magazine
Publication: Exchange Magazine
Date: Friday February 4th, 2011
Source: http://www.exchangemagazine.com/morningpost/2011/week5/Monday/013109.htm
Ottawa – For the millions of people worldwide who suffer from psychiatric and neurodegenerative diseases such as Parkinson’s disease and schizophrenia, Carleton Professor Maria DeRosa’s next research initiative provides hope for a new treatment.
DeRosa is one of 10 Carleton professors who will be honoured with a Research Achievement Award from the university for her innovative research that helps find solutions to real-world problems. The other winners will be announced throughout Carleton’s Research Days celebration that runs until Feb. 11.
DeRosa has won major awards for her research that looks at how single-stranded pieces of synthetic DNA called aptamers can be used to combat everything from diseases to environmental contaminants.
“Aptamers act like antibodies, but with the added advantages of being more chemically robust, less expensive to generate and more easily modified for a range of applications, including medicine,” says DeRosa.
She plans on using the $15,000 honorarium from her Carleton award to develop a DNA aptamer for the neurotransmitter dopamine and generate a strategy to deliver this aptamer across the blood-brain barrier. Dopamine helps to regulate motor behaviour, emotion, motivation, reward, memory and learning. This work will be done in collaboration with Carleton neuroscience Professor Matthew Holahan.
“We know that functional abnormalities have been implicated in various psychiatric and neurodegenerative diseases, most commonly, Parkinson’s disease and schizophrenia,” says DeRosa. “For these reasons, dopamine is a high-priority target for the development of an aptamer for biosensing and therapeutics. In the short term, this work will provide innovative new tools for studying the brain at the molecular level. In the long term, this research may serve as the underpinning for a drug discovery program with the potential to produce novel aptamer-based therapeutics for a variety of mental health conditions.”