He has been awarded the 10th International Paulo Gontijo Award in Medicine, which aims to encourage and recognise outstanding research on amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) biology by young principal investigators.
On hearing the news, Dr Patani said: “In previous years the winners include some pretty eminent scientists, so I’m really honoured and grateful to receive this prestigious award. I feel very privileged to work with fantastic collaborators across UCL’s Institute of Neurology and the Francis Crick Institute, who are equally dedicated to understanding and curing ALS.”
In addition to running the Neurodegeneration Biology Lab at the Crick, Dr Patani is an associate professor at the IoN and a consultant neurologist at the National Hospital for Neurology and Neurosurgery.
Dr Patani’s lab uses human induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs) to generate neuronal and glial cells from patients with ALS and healthy volunteers, to work out the earliest molecular events of disease pathology. iPSCs are adult cells that have been reverted back into stem cells capable of becoming any cell type. Under the right conditions, they can be coaxed into becoming the cell type that researchers want to study such as nerve cells or blood cells.
His work emphasises the importance of interdisciplinary and team science, integrating stem cell biology, developmental biology, neuropathology, bioinformatics and RNA biology.
The lab specifically focuses on two main areas: how abnormalities in RNA transcript structure lead to aberrant RNA-protein interactions to cause ALS and how glial cells of the brain – known as astrocytes – conspire with motor neurons to cause ALS.
By validating primary findings from ALS patient-specific iPSCs in mouse models and human post-mortem tissue from sporadic ALS cases, Dr Patani’s team aim to translate their discovery science into new therapeutic strategies, which are desperately needed in ALS.
The decision to award Rickie this year’s prize was made by the international jurors of the Instituto Paulo Gontijo in Brazil, composed of scientific authorities involved in ALS research. The award is supported by the Motor Neuron Disease Association, International Alliance of MND/ALS Associations and the European Network for the Cure of ALS.
Dr Patani will receive $20,000 and a Gold Medal awarded at the opening of the 29th International ALS/MND Symposium in Glasgow on 7 December 2018.