Classified in: Health, Business
Subject: VEN
Funding will support the creation of a multidisciplinary research team focusing on the intersection of neuroscience, psychiatry, and metabolism
SAN MATEO, Calif., March 21, 2024 /PRNewswire/ — Today, Baszucki Group announced $6 million in funding awarded to a research team led by University of Pittsburgh Psychiatry professor and researcher, Mary L. Phillips, MD, MD (Cantab). The philanthropic gift unites leaders across affective neuroscience, neuroimaging, mitochondrial biology, and cellular models to elucidate the neurobiological mechanisms underlying the therapeutic effect of the ketogenic diet in bipolar disorder, with an emphasis on symptoms of hypomania and mania.
“With this generous support from Baszucki Group, we embark on an ambitious endeavor to interrogate, for the first time, the relationship between gene expression, mitochondrial function, and brain markers associated with a ketogenic diet’s impact on symptoms of mania and hypomania,” said Dr. Mary Phillips, Distinguished Professor of Psychiatry, Clinical and Translational Science, and Bioengineering, and Pittsburgh Foundation-Emmerling Endowed Chair in Psychotic Disorders in the Department of Psychiatry at the University of Pittsburgh.
Dr. Phillips is a trained psychiatrist and Director of the Phillips Mood and Brain Laboratory which specializes in mood disorders. She is internationally recognized for her research on emotional and reward processing in the human brain, and how dysregulation of these systems contributes to serious mental illnesses?producing over 400 research publications. The research team also includes Zachary Freyberg, MD, PhD, Associate Professor of Psychiatry and Cell Biology, University of Pittsburgh, Colleen McClung, PhD, Professor of Psychiatry and Clinical and Translational Science, University of Pittsburgh, and Ana Andreazza, PhD, Professor of Pharmacology & Toxicology and Psychiatry, University of Toronto.
“This investment underscores our continued commitment to supporting rigorous, scientific inquiry…