The NARSAD Foundation (National Alliance for Research in Schizophrenia and Depression) in the USA has awarded Dr. Isabel Pérez-Otaño, researcher at CIMA of the University of Navarra, with a Young Investigator Award. This award of 60,000 dollars (about 44,000 euros) will finance a project on neuronal pathologies. The team of the Navarre scientist will study the earliest alterations that occur in brain diseases such as Alzheimer's and Parkinson's disease.

The goal of the research is to design therapies against the disease from its beginnings. Recent programs of study suggest that these ailments could originate in a failure of the synapses, Structures microscopic that connect neurons to each other and whose precision is critical for the correct functioning of neural circuits.

From California to Pamplona

Dr. Pérez-Otaño joined CIMA in 2004 after a long stay in the USA, first at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies in San Diego (California) and then at Duke University (North Carolina), where she specialized in Molecular and Cellular Neurobiology. At CIMA of the University of Navarra he has created and directs the laboratory of Cellular Neurobiology.

The North American NARSAD Foundation is the largest non-profit organization funding the research of brain and behavioral disorders. It supports researchers seeking therapies for mental and development diseases, as well as neurodegenerative diseases, as they all seem to share symptoms and etiopathogenic (disease-causing) aspects.