July 27, 2021
Anjelica Gonzalez, PhD, won a Blavatnik award for her low-cost, versatile respirator.
Photo by Michael Marsland
Even today, attention to research on women’s health remains far behind that of men, and fewer women faculty are pursuing opportunities to commercialize their research. Two organizations at Yale – Women’s Health Research at Yale (WHRY) and the Office of Cooperative Research (OCR) - are looking to change those trends, offering grants and programs specifically aimed at supporting women’s health research and supporting women faculty who wish to seek funding to bring their discoveries to a commercial light.
WHRY is one of the first centers of its kind, formed in 1998 to address the fact that women were largely excluded from clinical trials, meaning there were almost no data examining how a disease or a treatment might impact women differently than men. Launched via a grant from a private foundation, WHRY has, from its inception, offered pilot funds to
Neurons Regenerated through Suppression of Regeneration-Thwarting Genes
March 2, 2021
Using a massive screen of 400 mouse genes, Yale School of Medicine researchers identified 40 genes that thwart axon regeneration in central nervous system cells. By suppressing those genes, the researchers were able to regenerate damaged axons in a mouse model of glaucoma, that is, in mice that had been subjected to optic nerve crush. Suppression of one of the genes the gene for the cytokine interleukin-22 (IL-22) proved to be especially effective in promoting regeneration.
“This opens a new chapter in regeneration research,” said Stephen M. Strittmatter, MD, PhD, the Vincent Coates professor of neurology at the Yale School of Medicine. To support this assertion, Strittmatter and colleagues presented their findings in an article (“Optic nerve regeneration screen identifies multiple genes restricting adult neural repair”) that appeared March 2 in