Ashutosh Phadte, PhD, Awarded Fellowship from The Hereditary Disease Foundation

Huntington’s disease (HD) is a neurodegenerative disorder characterized by a progressive loss of medium spiny neurons within the brain. At the genetic level, it has been observed that an aberrant expansion of the CAG trinucleotide repeat within exon 1 of the huntingtin gene correlated to an earlier age of onset of HD. Oxidative damage to the DNA has also been observed in neurodegenerative diseases such as Alzheimer’s Disease, Parkinson’s Disease as well as HD. The current study investigates the effect of targeted, localized oxidative damage on CAG repeat expansion in cell models of HD, and identify key biomolecules involved that are associated with the observed effects.

Project title: Oxidative damage and CAG expansions in Huntington's Disease