Derek Southwell, MD, PhD, assistant professor in the Duke Department of Neurosurgery and surgical director of Duke’s Comprehensive Epilepsy Center, has received the NIH Director’s New Innovator Award from the National Institutes of Health (NIH).
Southwell is a surgeon-scientist who treats patients with epilepsy and movement disorders and performs translational neuroscience research on the function and therapeutic modification of brain circuits. He has been awarded $1.5 million from the NIH to fund his project, “Exploring cortical inhibitory circuit design in the human brain,” which will investigate the cellular properties and circuit functional roles of human cortical interneurons.
While the dysfunction of cortical interneurons is thought to contribute to various brain disorders such as epilepsy, autism, and Alzheimer’s, and new treatments are taking shape to target interneurons in the human brain, the field has just begun to understand what human interneurons are and what they do, according to Southwell.
"We’ve come to learn a lot about interneurons in mice, but we still don't know much at all about these cells in humans,” says Southwell. “Studying human interneurons and their circuit functions, specifically, is important to understanding how our brain works, and it will help us develop more specific and effective treatments for human conditions.”
Using tissues that are removed during neurosurgical procedures and CellREADR, a genetic tool invented by Southwell’s collaborator, Duke’s Joshua Huang, PhD, Southwell’s lab will study the functional properties of different types of human interneurons and investigate how they contribute to inhibitory signaling in human neural circuits.
Southwell joined Duke in early 2019 after completing his MD, PhD, and neurosurgical residency training at the University of California San Francisco. He holds secondary appointments in the Duke departments of Neurobiology, Neurology, Pathology, and Cell Biology. Dating back to his graduate studies, he has been involved in pioneering studies of interneuron transplantation. He currently acts as a principal investigator in a first-in-human study of interneuron transplantation, which investigates the safety and efficacy of an experimental cell therapy in patients with temporal lobe epilepsy.
The award is part of the NIH's High-Risk, High-Reward Research (HRHR) program, which supports highly innovative scientists who proposed visionary and broadly impactful behavioral and biomedical research projects. “The HRHR program champions exceptionally bold and innovative science that pushes the boundaries of biomedical and behavioral research,” said Tara A. Schwetz, PhD, the NIH's director of the Division of Program Coordination, Planning, and Strategic Initiatives. “The groundbreaking science pursued by these researchers is poised to have a broad impact on human health.”