Sabhya Rana Awarded SCIRTS Postdoc Fellowship from Craig Neilsen Foundation

Sabhya Rana

Sabhya Rana, PhD, was awarded a $150k 2-year Spinal Cord Injury Research on the Translational Spectrum (SCIRTS) Postdoctoral Fellowship by the Craig H. Neilsen Foundation. Under the mentorship of Dr. David Fuller, Dr. Rana will investigate the use of ampakines, molecules that alter brain chemistry and enhance the activities of glutamate in the brain, as a target to augment diaphragm muscle activation in rodent models of spinal cord injury. This work will extend active investigations in the Fuller laboratory that are exploring the effect of ampakines on phrenic nerve activity in various respiratory disease states. Improved respiratory muscle activation for breathing, coughing, sighing, and exercising is essential after incomplete cervical spinal cord injury. Dr. Rana’s research will lay the groundwork for the use of ampakines as a possible treatment strategy that may be rapidly translatable to human use for respiratory rehabilitation.

Read more about the project here: https://chn.dimensions.ai/details/grant/grant.9714647