In January 2022, Stanford Neurosurgery announced the inaugural round of the Neurosurgery Department Seed Grant Program. The grants provide $150K of funding over two years.

"We hope that these research seed grants will launch exciting new opportunities by strengthening ties between research and clinical faculty in the Department of Neurosurgery," said Ivan Soltesz, PhD, who led the selection committee. 

Julia Kaltschmidt, Suzanne Tharin: Reconstitution of the injured corticospinal motor circuit: and evolutionary-developmental approach

Paralysis in spinal cord injury is largely due to loss of a functional corticospinal motor circuit, which controls voluntary movement, including walking in humans. Transplantation of stem cell-derived neurons is considered a potential therapeutic strategy, however, this approach has been unsuccessful at restoring voluntary movement or the underlying circuitry. The research team will explore whether the injured 2-neuron human corticospinal circuit can be restored as a 3-neuron human corticospinal circuit, with human iPS (hiPS)-derived spinal interneurons acting as relay grafts, setting the stage for functional recovery of voluntary movement.

Scott Owen, Laura Prolo: Investigating the role of Shank3 in homeostatic adaptation of human neocortical neuronal activity 

Neurons are continuously adapting to changes in network conditions induced by learning, development, or injury. This process, which is called homeostatic plasticity, is believed to underlie key aspects of autism, depression, and other neurological diseases, but is poorly understood in the human brain. In this project, the researchers will use CRISPR-based genetic manipulation and physiological recordings from neurosurgically resected human brain tissue to directly investigate how the autism risk gene Shank3 affects homeostatic plasticity in human neurons.