A $418,000 grant from the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke will allow Anton Reiner, PhD, and Tayebeh Pourmotabbed, PhD, of the University of Tennessee Health Science Center (UTHSC) to research a possible new gene therapy treatment approach for Huntington’s Disease.

Reiner and Pourmotabbed’s research will be conducted through a grant titled, “Development of DNAzyme Gene Therapy for Huntington's Disease.” They will both serve as principal investigators on this award. The funds will be distributed over two years.

Reiner is a professor in the Department of Anatomy and Neurobiology in the UTHSC College of Medicine, and Pourmotabbed is a professor in the Department of Microbiology, Immunology and Biochemistry in the College of Medicine.

The researchers will develop and test a novel gene therapy, which will be evaluated for its effectiveness in mice that have been genetically engineered to have the disease. The gene therapy employs molecules called DNAzymes that have been designed to selectively prevent the formation of the mutant protein huntingtin, which causes Huntington’s disease.