By Keya Patro
Zachary Freyberg, associate professor of psychiatry and of cell biology, School of Medicine, was selected to receive the Parkinson’s Foundation Impact Award.
The Parkinson’s Foundation Impact Award recognizes innovative research projects that advance our understanding of the biology of Parkinson’s disease through groundbreaking or unconventional ideas. The award supports researchers in testing high-impact, novel concepts with the potential to significantly benefit the Parkinson’s disease community, providing up to $200,000 in total funding over two years.
Freyberg is also an associate member of the Pittsburgh Liver Research Center and a training faculty member at the Center for Neuroscience at the University of Pittsburgh. His research aims to better understand human disorders of dopaminergic neurotransmission including addictions, schizophrenia and Parkinson’s disease at cellular and molecular levels.
His lab has developed a new research system using the fruit fly (Drosophila melanogaster) to study how dopamine is released and functions at nerve cell connections. This research has led to the idea that dopamine containing vesicles use neurotransmitter glutamate to adjust how much dopamine they release in response to nerve cell activity. Ongoing work is further examining the physiological roles of dopamine/glutamate cotransmission in response to changes in dopamine neuron activity and the potential roles this may play in providing protection to dopamine neurons in Parkinson’s disease.
For this award, Freyberg will work closely with School of Medicine coinvestigators Emily Rocha and Jill Glausier to determine how genes that are implicated in dopamine neuron resilience impact human dopamine neuron function and structure in response to exposures to pesticides linked to Parkinson’s disease. If successful, such studies will identify new genes driving dopamine neuron protection to pesticides and Parkinson’s disease.