Chunling Chen will receive the 2021 EBS Research Staff Award for Pharmacology

Chunling Chen, Director of the Isom Lab for over 20 years, has an impressive record of scientific productivity. She is an author on 26 papers in high impact journals, with 5 as first-author. Her most recent contribution was as second author on the publication, Antisense oligonucleotides increase Scn1a expression and reduce seizures and SUDEP incidence in a mouse model of Dravet syndrome, published in Sci. Trans. Med. in 2020. This work, describing the first gene modulatory precision therapy for the developmental and epileptic encephalopathy, Dravet syndrome, provided the pre-clinical evidence for two on-going FDA approved clinical trials in pediatric Dravet syndrome patients in the US as well as a similar trial that is now beginning in the UK. Congratulations, Chunling!