NEW INVESTIGATOR AWARD 2021 WINNER

Dr. Yun Li, Scientist at the Hospital for Sick Children, and Assistant Professor at the University of Toronto

Grant Project: Engineering a somatic mosaic human brain organoid model of epilepsy

Dr. Yun Li is a Scientist at the Hospital for Sick Children, and an Assistant Professor at the University of Toronto. Her laboratory studies how the human brain forms, what makes it unique from those of other species, and how neurological disorders impact its development and function. Her group takes the experimental approach of modeling human brain development in the dish using stem cell derived 3-dimensional brain organoids, which are little clusters of neural cells grown in the culture dish that mimic important aspects of brain development and function.

As an Epilepsy Canada New Investigator, Dr. Li will establish a novel mosaic organoid model of epilepsy. Her project is motivated by recent discoveries that many patients suffering from intractable epilepsy have genetic mutations that only occur in some of their brain cells. Understanding how these somatic mosaic mutations cause epilepsy may help us design new therapeutic strategies to treat these patients. By generating somatic mosaic brain organoids that mimic the brains of these epilepsy patients, Dr. Li’s group will establish a new avenue to study the molecular and cellular causes of their seizures, and to identify potential drug candidates.