August 2, 2007

SIU Med School Receives National Grant

Two scientists at Southern Illinois University School of Medicine in Springfield have been jointly awarded a one-year national grant from the Citizens United for Research in Epilepsy (CURE) to study sudden unexpected death in epilepsy (SUDEP). The total budget for the grant is $75,000.

Sudden unexpected death in epilepsy results from breathing failure after seizures. This study will determine if specific drugs will prevent SUDEP in a type of mice that are known to have seizures and death due to breathing failure. It also will examine how these drugs act on a region of the brain that controls breathing to determine the nature of the defect causing death. The research could lead to the prevention of SUDEP.

Carl L. Faingold, Ph.D., professor and chair of pharmacology, and Victor Uteshev-Gaard, Ph.D., assistant professor of pharmacology, are the principal investigators for the project. Faingold's research has been funded by the National Institutes of Health and other national foundations for 30 years and totals $3.5 million. His research has focused on how drugs affect networks of brain cells involved in epilepsy and alcoholism.

This is the second national grant awarded to Uteshev-Gaard. His previous research has been the study of mechanisms that regulate neuronal function and signaling and how drugs change those mechanisms.

Faingold joined the SlU faculty in 1972 and was named chair of pharmacology in 1996. He completed a postdoctoral fellowship in neuro-pharmacology at the University of Missouri Institute of Psychiatry (1972). He earned his doctoral degree in pharmacology at Northwestern University in Evanston (1970) and his bachelor's at the University of Illinois in Chicago (1965).

Uteshev-Gaard joined SIU's faculty in 2006. He earned his doctoral degree in physiology from the University of Toronto in Canada (1997). He earned his master's and bachelor's degrees from the Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology in Russia (1989, 1987).

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