July 25, 2007

SIU Med School Researcher Receives National Grants

A researcher at Southern Illinois University School of Medicine in Springfield has been awarded two national grants.  Amy C. Arai, Ph.D., associate professor of pharmacology, is the principal investigator for the projects.

Arai received a two-year grant from the National Institutes of Health (NIH)/ National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke (NINDS).  The study will determine how proteins called TARPs affect a receptor in the brain that is abundant in nerve cells.  TARPS may play a role in several neurological disorders.  The total budget for the grant is $347,703.

A three-year grant has been awarded by the Whitehall Foundation for the study of kisspeptin, a neuropeptide in the brain.  The study will focus on how kisspeptin spurs synaptic nerve activity in a section of the brain involved in memory and in another area important for reproductive behavior and emotion.  The total budget for the second grant is $225,000. 

Arai’s research has received national funding for seven years and now totals more than $1.4 million.  Her research focuses primarily on the regulation of cognition and memory.

Arai joined the SIU faculty in 1999 from the Center for the Neurobiology of Learning and Memory at the University of California (UC) at Irvine.  She earned her doctoral, master’s and bachelor’s degrees at Chiba University in Japan (1987, 1984, 1982). 

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