Reception Honors Recipients of Funding From L.I.F.E. Foundation

Researchers from the University of Cincinnati (UC) and Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center are recipients of funding support from the L.I.F.E. (Local Initiative For Excellence) Foundation, launched by Cincinnati philanthropist George Wile.

Recipients were honored Tuesday, July 14, at a reception at the Kingsgate Marriott Conference Center. Awards of $100,000 per project went to:

• Robert McCullumsmith, MD, PhD, and Adam Funk, PhD, for their project, "Proteomic and genomic investigation of PDS-95 protein-protein interactions in schizophrenia.” The application was conceived and written by Funk, a senior postdoctoral fellow in McCullumsmith’s lab. McCullumsmith is an adjunct associate professor in the UC Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Neuroscience and the department’s associate vice chair of translational research and research education. Team members also include Ken Greis, PhD, an associate professor in the UC Department of Cancer Biology; Jarek Meller, PhD, an associate professor in the UC Department of Environmental Health and Cincinnati Children’s Division of Biomedical Informatics; and Guillaume Labilloy, an application developer in the Division of Biomedical Informatics and student in UC’s new PhD in Biomedical Informatics program beginning this fall.

• Ying Sun, PhD, and Chris Mayhew, PhD, for their project, "Non-invasive iPSC-based Therapies for Treatment of Neurodegenerative Diseases.” Sun, the principal investigator, is an associate professor in the UC Department of Pediatrics and the Division of Human Genetics at Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center. Her lab focuses on understanding the pathogenesis of Gaucher disease and other lysosomal storage diseases for development of specific therapies, and the roles of saposins in glycosphingolipids metabolism and neurodegeneration. Mayhew is co-investigator on this project, assistant professor in Division of Developmental Biology and co-director of the Pluripotent Stem Cell Facility at Cincinnati Children’s. Team members also include Yueh-Chiang Hu, PhD, assistant professor and director of the Transgenic Animal Genomic editing core at Cincinnati Children’s; Benjamin Liou, senior research assistant; and Venette Inskeep, research assistant, in the Division of Human Genetics at Cincinnati Children’s.   

At the reception, Wile congratulated the recipients and cited them as examples of the talent needed to address the foundation’s focus, which is molecular genetics and regenerative medicine.

"We want this focus to have some relevance to brain health,” he said. "That’s a very ambitious aim, but I think we have to have a big aim toward the future. It’s a long-term effort. Despite the difficulties, the research begins by building future personal careers, and we hope to make UC a leader in brain research.”

The L.I.F.E. Foundation’s Board of Trustees includes Jerry Lingrel, PhD, interim chair of the UC department of Molecular Genetics, Biochemistry and Microbiology, and Paul Keck Jr., MD, president and CEO of the Lindner Center of HOPE, a mental health treatment center in Mason, Ohio, which is a partnership of UC Health and the Lindner Family Foundation, and executive vice chair of the UC Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Neuroscience. Additional trustees are Wile, Carter Randolph, PhD, and Patty Brockman.