Michael Lodato, PhD, assistant professor of molecular, cell & cancer biology, has received a 2023 National Institutes of Health Director’s New Innovator Award from the NIH Common Fund’s High-Risk, High-Reward Research program.
Dr. Lodato’s project focuses on how DNA damage during life results in permanent changes in the genome in cells of the human body, called somatic mutations. He and his group will study the rates, causes and consequences of somatic mutations that occur in the human brain in the normal aging process as well as in neurodegenerative diseases such as Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s. They will use this award to develop a new spatial method to quantify and characterize somatic mutations in the human body.
“One major question in the field is what role misfolded protein aggregates play in neurodegenerative diseases, but this question remains elusive because it is difficult to compare affected and unaffected neurons that are often intermixed in the diseased brain,” Lodato said. “The technology we will develop as part of this award will allow us to prospectively isolate single neurons with and without misfolded protein aggregates and compare their genomes with single-cell resolution. We hope these experiments will elucidate new mechanisms of neuron disfunction in aging and disease, paving the way for new treatments.”
Lodato and his team will focus on neurons from late-stage Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s disease donors.
The Lodato Lab at UMass Chan studies the rates, causes and consequences of somatic mutations in the human brain and across the body. Lodato received his PhD from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 2012, where he worked on the transcriptional regulation of stem cell state in the lab of Rudolf Jaenisch, MD. He began his studies of somatic mutations in the human brain in 2013 during his postdoctoral fellowship in the lab of Christopher A. Walsh, MD, PhD, at Boston Children’s Hospital and Harvard Medical School.
Lodato has received numerous other awards and honors for his work, including the Glenn Foundation and American Federation for Aging Junior Faculty Award. He was named as a Next Generation Leader by the Allen Institute for Brain Science.
The NIH Director’s New Innovator Award supports unusually innovative research from early career investigators who are within 10 years of their final degree or clinical residency and have not yet received a research project grant or equivalent NIH grant. The NIH’s High-Risk, High-Reward research program supports exceptionally creative scientists pursuing highly innovative research with the potential for broad impact in biomedical, behavioral or social sciences within the NIH mission.
