The latest round of Blue Sky Research Grants from the McCamish Parkinson’s Disease Innovation Program is supporting a diverse range of projects that confront this devastating brain disorder on multiple fronts.

One of the research team wants to create a new cell therapy for Parkinson’s disease by implanting healthy mitochondria into diseased neurons. Another is building a model for the early diagnosis of Parkinson’s. And another is developing a computational approach to study the disarray of neural circuitry across the entire brain.

“This is a moment of exciting growth for the program,” said Garrett Stanley, director of the program and professor in the Wallace H. Coulter Department of Biomedical Engineering at Georgia Tech and Emory University. “We had our biggest year yet of applications for research funding.”

The 2023 awards will support eight multidisciplinary research groups from Georgia Tech and Emory, with much of the focus aimed on the neurophysiological basis of Parkinson’s.

“They’re asking, what is actually going on in the complex circuits of the brain that causes this disease,” Stanley said. “The program has the perspective that the fundamental understanding of the underlying biology of Parkinson’s is one critical path to the development of technologies for better treatments and, ultimately, a cure.”

Read about all of the McCamish Blue Sky projects right here.