Projects

The PRETEND program, developed by Dr. Dimitropoulos and her team, has been shown to improve aspects of social, emotional, and cognitive functioning in preschool and school age children with PWS. The purpose of this funded project is to make the PRETEND Program available to more families by establishing a platform to train interventionists to use...

Understanding the greatest clinical challenges is important in PWS, but there are individuals with PWS who are not participating in registry studies or surveys. Insurance claims data can be used to identify most people with PWS receiving care in the US. This project will analyze a vast database of claims from emergency departments and hospitals...

The SNORD genes are known to be very important in PWS, but there is a lack of appropriate tools to study the target and function of these genes. Dr. He and his team have developed two new methods that can map the targets of the SNORD genes. They will apply these new methods to mouse models and human cell lines with a deficiency in PWS-encoded...

Dr. Schaaf’s previous research showed that the ‘support cells’ in the brain (astrocytes) express receptors for oxytocin, are critically involved in the modulation of social behavior and anxiety, and that there are differences in both number and anatomical location of these astrocytes in healthy mice compared to a PWS mouse model. In this second...

Through previous work using a new optimized method, Dr. Whipple discovered that Snord116, a driver of PWS, directly interacts with ribosomes, the machinery that produces proteins in the cell in mouse neurons. In this funded project, they will apply their optimized method to human neurons to ask if the interaction between SNORD116 and ribosomes is...