Research chair to support exploration of neural disorder

Biomedical science professor Jeff Dason is the Faculty of Science research chair.

The Faculty of Science has named Jeff Dason as its 2024-2026 research chair.

“I’m thrilled to receive this chair, as it will allow me to further expand my research program,” says Dr. Dason.

The associate professor in the Department of Biomedical Science started at the University of Windsor in 2017. The award comes with a two-year grant of $40,000. The new position will allow him to further develop his research into the nervous system disease, Fragile X syndrome (FXS).

“Fragile X Syndrome is a heritable neurodevelopmental condition that affects one in 3,000 to 6,000 individuals and is the leading contributor to intellectual disability and autism,” he says.

“FXS is characterized by altered synaptic structure and function that results in various behavioural effects, including cognitive deficits.”

No effective treatments for FXS currently exists even though the underlying cause of many of its symptoms is tied to altered metabotropic glutamate receptor signaling at synapses. Studying the fruit fly, Dason investigates communication between neurons and the formation of synapses.

“The fruit fly, Drosophila melanogaster, has yielded many insights into virtually all biological processes and it continues to be an important model system for biomedical research. Drosophila models of FXS can mimic many aspects of FXS in humans, thereby allowing us to take advantage of the power of Drosophila genetics to rapidly learn new things about FXS,” he says.

“We propose to look at a potential target for this disease in a fly model of FXS. This will allow us to better understand how this protein functions at synapses and whether altered levels of this protein are responsible for some of the impairments seen in FXS.”

These findings, he says, will provide mechanistic insights to the synaptic effects reported in FXS.

“We anticipate that our findings will assist in developing new therapeutic strategies to improve the treatment of FXS,” says Dason.

Dason also currently holds a NSERC discovery grant for researching how lipids regulate synaptic function and a CIHR project grant looking at pain mechanisms.

 The goal of the Faculty of Science research chair program, says dean of science Claudio Verani, is to increase research funding and capacity, while fostering new partnerships and research directions by growing existing research programs and supporting outstanding faculty researchers.

“Research like this constitutes an important first step to understanding of the basic mechanisms of life, and a fundamental move to imagine and enable future therapies that benefit humankind,” says Dr. Verani.

Courtesy: https://www.uwindsor.ca/dailynews/2025-02-07/research-chair-support-exploration-neural-disorder