CURE Grantee and Former Scientific Advisory Board Member Recipients of Prestigious AES Awards

The American Epilepsy Society Epilepsy Research Recognition Award for Basic Science
Annamaria Vezzani, PhD

Annamaria Vezzani obtained her Ph.D. degree in Neuropharmacology in Milano at the Mario Negri Institute for Pharmacological Research. She spent her first postdoctoral period in Baltimore at the Maryland Psychiatric Research Center, in the laboratory of Robert Schwarcz working on the mechanisms of epileptogenesis in experimental models. She is a member of the Editorial Boards of Epilepsy Currents, Epilepsy Research and Neuroscience and Associate Editor for basic science of Epilepsia. She has been appointed the Chair of the Commission on Neurobiology of the International League Against Epilepsy (2005-2009) which is promoting initiatives for improving translational research in epilepsy. Since 1999, she opened a new field of intensive studies in epilepsy research with the publication of seminal papers on the role of pro-inflammatory cytokines in seizures. The results showed that experimentally-induced seizures provoke extensive inflammation in the brain and that the activation of specific inflammatory processes in the brain contributes significantly to increase neuronal excitability, seizure susceptibility and neuronal damage. She also contributed to pioneer studies published in 2002, to elucidate the role of P-glycoprotein, a drug efflux transporter, in the mechanisms of pharmacoresistance using experimental models of seizures. Her laboratory showed that seizure activity induces the brain expression of P-glycoprotein and that selective pharmacological blockade, or genetic inactivation of this protein, results in increased brain concentration, and efficacy, of antiepileptic drugs. Her present research is focused on the preclinical characterization of novel targets for antiepileptic drug development and of gene therapy strategies.

To read about Dr. Vezzani’s CURE-funded work, click here.

2009 William G Lennox Award
Thomas P. Sutula, M.D., Ph.D.

Dr. Thomas Sutula is the Detling Professor and Chair of the Department of Neurology at the University of Wisconsin in Madison, where he is also the Director of the Center for Neuroscience. Dr. Sutula’s research has focused on understanding how the capacity for activity-dependent plasticity in neural circuitry influences epilepsy and its consequences. He has devoted particular attention to kindling, a phenomenon of seizure-induced plasticity that models temporal lobe epilepsy. In 1988 he discovered that repeated brief seizures induced sprouting of the mossy fiber axons in the hippocampal dentate gyrus, and in 1989 demonstrated that sprouting is a feature of human temporal lobe epilepsy. Sprouting has subsequently been recognized in virtually all models of chronic focal epilepsy. His laboratory has provided extensive characterization of the anatomical features of the sprouted pathway, demonstrated that sprouting increases as a function of repeated seizures, and contributes to recurrent excitation in the dentate gyrus. In another series of studies, his laboratory has also demonstrated that repeated brief seizures evoked by kindling induce hippocampal neuronal loss in a pattern mimicking hippocampal sclerosis, with accompanying progressive memory deficits. His current work is addressing how early life seizures influence development of structural and functional organization of the hippocampus in adulthood, how activity-dependent alterations in the extracellular ionic environment progressively unmask recurrent excitation, and how genetic background influences susceptibility to posttraumatic epilepsy and stress disorders. His recent work with Wisconsin collaborators has revealed how metabolic regulation and glycolytic inhibition can be employed therapeutically to achieve beneficial anticonvulsant and disease-modifying effects in chronic epilepsy.