Peg Nopoulos, chair of psychiatry and professor of psychiatry, neurology, and pediatrics in the UI Carver College of Medicine, has received a five-year, $18 million grant to continue and expand a decade-long study on brain development in children at risk for developing Huntington’s disease (HD).
HD is a progressive, neurodegenerative disease that diminishes cognitive skills, affects emotions, and disrupts motor function. HD runs in families and if a parent has it, each child will have a 50% chance of developing the disease at some point in their lifetime.
Over the last decade, Nopoulos and her lab have been looking into the gene that causes HD. The gene, called HTT, has specific DNA repetitions in it. If these repetitions are expanded beyond a certain threshold in an individual, that person will develop HD at some point in their lifetime.