01/05/2025
The Loulou Foundation is pleased to announce the four Awardees of the 2025 CDKL5 Pilot Grant Program. Now in its tenth year, the CDKL5 Pilot Grant Program is directed and funded by the Loulou Foundation through its establishment of the CDKL5 Program of Excellence at the Orphan Disease Center of the University of Pennsylvania Perelman School of Medicine.
The goal of the Program is to advance basic and therapeutic research on CDKL5 Deficiency Disorder (CDD), a rare neurodevelopmental disorder affecting thousands of patients across the world. Again this year, the one-year research proposals submitted by these Pilot Grant Awardees cover a range of topics, from the basic biology of CDKL5 to translational and clinical development of therapeutics for CDD. All have gone through a thorough process of multiple peer reviews by the leading experts in the field.
We thank all applicants to this year’s grant program for providing a large number of high quality and competitive pool of research proposals, and thank as well the many scientists who served as peer reviewers for this year’s grant cycle, giving generously of their time and expertise to carefully evaluate and score all invited applications.
CDKL5 Pilot Grant Program Awardees 2025:
James Eubanks, PhD
University Health Network – Krembil Research Institute, Canada
“Preclinical Investigations Of Proteasome and Lysosome Inhibitors In CDKL5 Deficient Mice”
Maurizio Giustetto, PhD
University of Torino, Italy
“Exploiting microRNAs to disclose novel pathophysiological mechanisms, biomarkers and therapeutic approaches for CDKL5 deficiency disorder”
Jedd Hubbs, PhD
Boston Children’s Hospital, USA
“Development of a tau hyperphosphorylation assay in CDKL5 deficiency disorder iPSC-derived neurons”
Josephine Thinwa, PhD
UT Southwestern Medical Center, USA
“Regulation of CDKL5 Function by Type I Interferons”
Congratulations again to the 2025 CDKL5 Pilot Grant awardees; we are grateful for the important contributions that they and the other dedicated scientists in the CDKL5 community will make to advancing therapeutic development for CDD. We also look forward to learning more about these and other exciting advances at the CDKL5 Forum in Boston, MA, on October 27-28, 2025.
