Bruce Appel Receives Outstanding Investigator Award

(October 2021) The National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke has awarded an eight-year, $6.9 million Outstanding Investigator Award to Bruce Appel, PhD, for his project titled, “Mechanisms of Developmental Myelination.”

Appel is professor of pediatrics and head of the Department of Pediatrics Section of Developmental Biology.

 The long-term goal of Appel’s project is to understand how oligodendrocytes, which are glial cells of the central nervous system, form specific amounts of myelin on select axons during development. Completion of this research will substantially extend understanding of the cellular and molecular mechanisms by which myelin membrane is produced and modified by brain activity. 

This research will provide important new insights to the developmental basis of learning, memory, and psychiatric disease and to provide a foundation for designing therapeutic strategies to promote myelination of brains damaged by disease or injury.