The Aicardi Goutieres Syndrome Advocacy Association (AGSAA) is thrilled to announce the winners of our community funded 2022 Rare Researcher Early Career Researcher (ECR) Grant. It turns out that great researchers and research opportunities are not so rare! As such, we have decided to fund two scientists, Dr. Jessica Garau (a postdoctoral researcher at IRCCS Mondino Foundation, Pavia, Italy) and Dr. Barney Viengkhou (a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Sydney, Australia). Both submitted strong applications, each exploring very different questions. Our reviewers were impressed with the significance of these projects and offered strong praise for each (e.g. “addresses the major gaps in AGS research”, “[could] form a unique platform to generate novel therapeutics for AGS“). How could we choose just one?

Dr. Viengkhou will expand upon prior work exploring the role of the brain vasculature in AGS pathogenesis by characterizing the morphological characteristics and gene expression of brain vasculature in samples from AGS patients and a transgenic mouse model. Dr. Garau will be examining the genetics and gene expression of multiple AGS patients with identical mutations in an attempt to explain the factors that lead to variable severity between patients with the same disease causing mutation.

We will share more about these scientists and their work in the coming months, and the AGSAA will hold a webinar near the end of 2022 for each to share results from their projects and engage in dialogue with the AGS community. Let’s give a round of applause to these two for their outstanding proposals and another round to the families and friends that donated to make this grant a possibility!